HONG KONG -- Amid the spread of bird flu, developing Asian nations face a challenge they are failing to meet, because a degree of modernity is required that they are unable to attain. On the one hand, Asia pursues the skyscrapers, the summit conferences, the high-tech industries seen as symbols of modernity. But Asia also clings to old habits and attitudes that can undermine those symbols and produce the unfortunate side effect of spreading disease around the world.
A bird-flu pandemic has already spread from Pakistan to Japan, and may spread farther because some Asian countries have not dealt with the danger with the required degrees of realism, efficiency and urgency.
This time last year, the absence of modernity was highlighted by the horrendous 22-week delay in China's opening up to the outside world regarding what was belatedly classified as SARS. A modest degree of urgency and government transparency, operating through freedom of information and freedom of the press, could have have prevented the global spread of the new illness.