Six more towns in Sichuan Province reported cases on Wednesday, in addition to the two cities, Ziyang and Neijiang, where people first fell ill after slaughtering pigs foaming at the mouth last month, the ministry said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was baffled.

It said if the disease was indeed caused by the streptococcus suis bacterium, as preliminary Chinese results show, it would be the first time the bacterium had struck so many people at one time -- raising fears it had become more virulent.

The Chinese government was working to reassure the public that it had the problem under control, stressing the spread could be stopped if people avoided slaughtering infected pigs.

"We have the technology and procedures to bring the disease under control," the China Daily quoted an agriculture ministry official as saying.

Investigations show that only those who came in contact with infected pigs or pork -- through slaughtering or processing -- and had open wounds fell ill, the Beijing Daily Messenger cited experts as saying.

Those who only ate the cooked pork did not get sick, it said.

The victims were mostly farmers who raised pigs in small, insanitary farms. Farmers said they had a habit of eating sick pigs instead of burying them because they were poor.

Newspaper accounts said many people pitched in to shave the hair off the killed swine, wash the internal organs and chop up the meat to distribute.

One woman who fell ill was quoted by the Beijing Daily Messenger as saying that she did not think anything of the small wound on her hand when she helped a relative kill a pig last week.

"After killing the pig, our entire family boiled three bowls of pork to eat. After eating just a few mouthfuls of the meat, I felt my heart pound, dizzy and nauseous," Jiang Suhua said. "Later my legs were so weak I couldn't stand up. My arms and legs also had large blotches of blood under the skin."

Another farmer said that a relative gave him a slice of freshly cut pork and he became dizzy and weak just from taking the pork home.

Other symptoms include high fever, vomiting and hemorrhaging, with many patients going into severe shock. Some of the victims died within 10 hours of showing symptoms, reports said.

The disease is rare, with the first recorded case in Denmark in 1968. More than 200 cases of human infection have been reported since then, not counting the latest data.

WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said it was too soon to say the bacterium was the cause or the only cause of the outbreak, adding that more laboratory tests were needed to see if other factors may be at work.

"We can't discount the possibility there could be other bacteria, virus or something else active in here," Dietz said.

The bacterium is endemic in Asia, North America and Europe, he said.

If it is the cause of the outbreak, the Chinese farmers' close proximity to their pigs might be a reason for the large number of cases.

"What we're accustomed to seeing is one or two cases ... Here, where pigs and humans are so intertwined in the countryside, it might explain why so many people are becoming sick," Dietz said.

An outbreak occurred in 1998 in eastern Jiangsu Province and a few people died, the China Daily quoted researchers as saying, but they did not reveal a death toll.

Taiwan caught in `status quo'

By Sing Young

Regarding the US' so-called "policy" which is supposed to maintain an undefined "status quo," Nat Bellocchi is right in saying that it is working to China's advantage ("China has `status quo' advantage," July 27, page 8).

Bellocchi, however, failed to point out the mismanagement of Taiwan's situation by recent US administrations. The US, in effect, has successfully assisted China in cornering the Taiwanese to the point where we don't feel that we, and particularly our children and grandchildren, have a future or have a say in our future -- no matter what we do or don't do.

Things are not under our control. We are exhausted, numb and totally paralyzed. We are asked to live a suspended and supposedly non-existent no-name life, or a "status quo."

This is a life sentence to us, our children and beyond. Being so absolutely paralyzed by the games of the US and China, it is a puzzle that the US appears unable to understand why Taiwan is not buying more US weapons. We are controlled and bound by the US in terms of "how much" we are allowed to "defend" our country.

On the other hand, the Israelis are decisive in defending their country because the US has been firmly behind their cause, albeit not all their acts. Unless the US shows that kind of support to Taiwan, the Taiwanese people will seek not more weapons, but a place outside of Taiwan for their children and grandchildren to have a life with a better outlook -- just like the two chairmen whose parties have been blocking the military budget. Who would want to build a life that is capped by a "status quo" and might be destroyed by two giants?

Bellocchi should have been frank and brave enough to tell the truth, as opposed to only politely pointing out where the "status quo" is heading.

Bellocchi's article has helped neither the US to understand the Taiwanese perspective nor the Taiwanese to understand where the US stands.

Sing Young

Taoyuan

Beware China's `soft war'

By Hanna Shen

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Poland repaid Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski for his support of the communist regime in China by donating money to a foundation of his wife, Jolanta Kwasniewska, the Polish weekly Gazeta Polska reported. Marek Jurek, a Polish lawmaker from the Law and Justice Party (a center-right political party), called the whole event "a discredit."

Gazeta Polska's article "The Chinese without barriers" by Piotr Lisiewicz provides more details of the close relationship between the big shots in the Alliance of the Democratic Left (the ruling party in Poland whose majority leaders were in the communist party before 1989 reforms) and the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1998, Kwasniewski (also of the Alliance of the Democratic Left) and his wife paid a visit to China. During the visit Kwasniewski signed a declaration stating that there is only one China, and that it is the People's Republic of China.

Other countries sign similar declarations with communist China, but none goes as far as to interpret "one China" as the People's Republic of China.

In 2001, the Embassy of the People's Republic of China paid 20,000 Polish zlotych (US$5,903) to the foundation run by Mrs. Kwasniewska. International relations experts in Poland have no doubt that the foundation shouldn't have accepted this monty, since the benefactor was a communist regime.

There were other similar contributions by the Chinese administration, such as the Committee for the Preservation of Historical Sites and Buildings headed by another bigwig among former Polish communists, Jerzy Jaskiernia, which received money from the Chinese embassy. However, sometimes the Chinese used a middleman, for example in 2003, the foundation run by Mrs. Kwasniewska again received money, this time from the Chinese?Polish Association.

The close cooperation between the Polish left-wing establishment and China also included frequent bilateral visits. In 2002, the Polish president called on China and a year later the delegation of the Chinese Women Federation paid a visit to the Polish Parliament.

According to the report prepared by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the motives for the visits and meetings for the Chinese delegates are very obvious. China spends a lot of money campaigning to improve its image around the world, and to make nations and their politicians ignore Tibet and the situation of Taiwan.

Chinese delegations visiting countries around the world have the strict political goal of trying to make international spectators believe in China's "progress" and "openness." Taiwan should be especially aware of these treacherous tactics applied by the Chinese regime to build a net of international arbiters who will discriminate against Taiwan in the international arena; those investing in China or promoting the idea of providing financial aid to China should realize that the communist regime uses their money to seduce people like the former apparatchiks in Poland.

In the Polish capital city, Warsaw there is already a joke spread around: "Taiwanese do not have to invest money in Poland, the CCP is already doing it for you."

Hanna Shen

Poland