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作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
SARS Seen as a Threat to Governments as Well as People
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com staff
Tuesday, April 22, 2003; 8:58 AM
SARS isn't just an epidemic. It's a potential Asian political earthquake. That's what the online media from Seoul to Sydney to New Dehli are saying. The spread of the deadly respiratory disease, often called "atypical pneumonia," threatens not only people but the established ways of the region's governments.
China's political system is as vulnerable as its people, says today's edition of the Asia Times. Treating SARS, argues the Hong Kong-based news site, requires political reform.
"The Chinese bureaucracy of today is arranged so as not to give a large amount of power to one man. This is to avoid the excesses experienced during the years of Mao Zedong, when Mao could do and undo whatever he wished without any government checks. The present system in effect forestalls any dictatorship but impedes swift reaction to virtually any emergency."
"China can't afford this clumsiness, and thus a reform of the political system has become a priority that can't be postponed for too long. However, first China will have to recover some of the face it has lost, by bringing SARS under control. This will take months, if not years, unless a miraculous vaccine is found. In the meantime this will be an opportunity for Hu Jintao to prove his mettle. If he manages the situation well from here on, he will become almost invincible and could then implement reform within the system."
The potential damage of the SARS epidemic is often compared to the Asian financial crisis that began six years ago.
Say Boon Lim, a syndicated columnist published in Tuesday's Korea Herald, suggests that "failure to control the SARS epidemic could lay bare China's financial and economic vulnerabilities. Indeed, a health crisis could develop into a financial crisis to rival the 1997-98 implosion that damaged so many of Southeast Asia's 'tiger economies,' less the Chinese government shows the same iron will it manifests in politics."
"The problem with China is that the ratio of operating surpluses and taxes to GDP has been declining and is below that of its fixed investment ratio," Lim writes. "In short, China is conceptually not making enough profits to cover its investment spending."
China's vast internal market and the consumer spending it generates might not provide sufficient protection from a dramatic fall in investment.
If a sharp decline investment "is associated with a health crisis, the impact on consumption would be greatly magnified . . . Some 700 million Chinese are employed in an agricultural sector undergoing tremendous rationalization and loss of jobs. Can China cope socially and politically with even more jobless people on the urban fringe? "
In Beijing, the People's Daily Online says China can cope. The news site of the Chinese Communist Party reports that President Hu Jintao is confident the disease can be overcome with high technology and persistence. The paper's editors, not surprisingly, take the same line.
"As long as we pay attention to its harmfulness, strengthen research on it, establish a complete monitoring system, exercise effective control and use other preventive means, we can certainly be able to eliminate or control its spread and prevalence," they say.
There is also optimism across the Straits of Taiwan. The disease's impact on Taiwan will be "short and sharp" predicts Taipei Times.
One economist was quoted in Monday's edition as saying, "the negative impacts of SARS on Asian economies are a result of uncertainty." Only 81 people have died from the pneumonia-like illness worldwide. This compares to around 3,000 deaths from regular pneumonia in 2000, a statistic that had no effect on the world economy."
Everywhere else in Asia, such optimism is in short supply.
Australia isn't prepared to handle a SARS epidemic, according to a leading researcher of the disease. On Monday the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Peter Cameron, an Australian medical professor in Hong Kong as saying, "SARS has the potential to totally disrupt the [Australian] health care system."
In Japan, the possibility of one Japanese person contracting SARS in Beijing was enough for a front page news story in Tokyo's Mainichi Daily News.
In India, where only a handful of SARS cases have been reported, The Times of India offers full coverage of the "SARS scare." The paper's editorial emphasizes the political challenge of the epidemic for the Indian government.
"If the SARS virus could go from China to as far as Canada, Beijing should realise that it is equally vulnerable to diseases from other parts of the world. Today, we are facing newer mutant strains of viruses about which we know little. Unless we pool our resources and knowledge, these organisms will stay a step ahead of us. This is particularly applicable to India where the authorities tend to treat all medical information as classified. Even now, with possible cases of SARS being reported from different parts of the country, the public is still in the dark about effective precautions and treatment. "
In Malaysia, surgical masks are proliferating. The Malay Mail, a daily in Kuala Lumpur, reported Monday that while the disease is considered under control, "the public is encouraged to wear masks to protect themselves from SARS."
The New Straits Times, another daily in the Malaysian capital, says "Our authorities should take no chances."
"If travelling restrictions to countries severely afflicted with of SARS are deemed mandatory rather than advisory, then, by all means, they should be implemented. Tourism, though important, must be made secondary. The point is that there should be no flip-flop policies in our efforts to contain the killer bug. While the public must exercise responsibility, the authorities must be extremely vigilant and put in measures that are appropriate to the risks."
Today's editions of the Philippines Inquirer features a front-page report on the country's first SARS death, a nursing aide who been infected in Canada. A total of 254 casual and close contacts of the woman have been quarantined, the paper says.
A SARS summit conference of regional leaders scheduled for April 29 will be crucial, says a leading daily in Thailand. The Nation says the world will be looking for "concrete action plans on two fronts: first, once-and-for-all preventive measures to contain and eventually eliminate Sars in all countries in the region, including China; second, accepted standard procedures at each country's entry and exit points."
"The outcome must be seen by the entire world as sufficiently realistic. Otherwise another regional crisis will certainly materialise, of far greater magnitude and much longer lasting than the 1997 financial crisis, meaning another lost decade in sight."
"This is indeed a battle against fear itself. "
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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