Beijing seeks to assuage fears of bird flu epidemic

AFP, BEIJING
Thursday, Jan 22, 2009, Page 1

China sought yesterday to allay fears over the threat of a bird flu pandemic after three people died from the disease this month and a fourth person remained critically ill.

There was no evidence that the potential for an outbreak of the disease was on the rise, China’s health ministry said in a statement.

“The four cases separately came from different provinces. There is no epidemiological connection between them; they are sporadic cases,” the ministry said.

A 16-year-old boy died on Tuesday from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Hunan Province.

A 27-year-old woman in Shandong Province also succumbed to the disease on Saturday, while the first fatality occurred on Jan. 5 when a 19-year-old woman died in Beijing.

The total number of reported deaths in China since the virus re-emerged in 2003 now stands at 23.

A two-year-old girl, meanwhile, is still critically ill in Shanxi Province, the ministry said.

The toddler’s mother died this month of severe pneumonia, sparking concern that she may actually have had bird flu and passed it on to her daughter.

Scientists have long feared the virus could mutate to a form that could jump easily from human to human, potentially sparking a pandemic.

The health ministry said it was unable to do tests to confirm whether the mother had died of avian influenza, as no samples were collected when she passed away.

But it added it was unlikely the girl caught bird flu from her mother.

“We cannot be sure that the patient’s mother had bird flu, and investigations show the patient had been exposed to live poultry markets,” the statement said.

“Therefore, we believe the patient’s infection most likely came from a live poultry market or another unknown exposure,” it said.

The WHO says about 250 people have died from bird flu worldwide since 2003.China sought yesterday to allay fears over the threat of a bird flu pandemic after three people died from the disease this month and a fourth person remained critically ill.

There was no evidence that the potential for an outbreak of the disease was on the rise, China’s health ministry said in a statement.

“The four cases separately came from different provinces. There is no epidemiological connection between them; they are sporadic cases,” the ministry said.

A 16-year-old boy died on Tuesday from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Hunan Province.

A 27-year-old woman in Shandong Province also succumbed to the disease on Saturday, while the first fatality occurred on Jan. 5 when a 19-year-old woman died in Beijing.

The total number of reported deaths in China since the virus re-emerged in 2003 now stands at 23.

A two-year-old girl, meanwhile, is still critically ill in Shanxi Province, the ministry said.

The toddler’s mother died this month of severe pneumonia, sparking concern that she may actually have had bird flu and passed it on to her daughter.

Scientists have long feared the virus could mutate to a form that could jump easily from human to human, potentially sparking a pandemic.

The health ministry said it was unable to do tests to confirm whether the mother had died of avian influenza, as no samples were collected when she passed away.

But it added it was unlikely the girl caught bird flu from her mother.

“We cannot be sure that the patient’s mother had bird flu, and investigations show the patient had been exposed to live poultry markets,” the statement said.

“Therefore, we believe the patient’s infection most likely came from a live poultry market or another unknown exposure,” it said.

The WHO says about 250 people have died from bird flu worldwide since 2003.

Leaks show blurry line in the Strait
　

By Liang Wen-Chieh 梁文傑
Thursday, Jan 22, 2009, Page 8

Various newspapers in Taiwan have taken different approaches to the case in which Wang Ren-bing (王仁炳), a senior specialist at the Presidential Office’s Department of Special Affairs, and Chen Pin-jen (陳品仁), a former assistant to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟), are accused of having colluded to leak secrets from the Office of the President.

The Chinese-language United Daily News said: “He may be a member of the pan-green camp and he may be a specialist, but he can still sell out Taiwan.”

While the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) ran the headline “Wang Ren-bing is a pan-green supporter, Chen Pin-jen a pan-blue.”

The former paper is pro-blue, the latter pro-green. The pan-blues want to blame the affair on the pan-greens, and vice versa. The truth of the matter is the question of civil servants leaking state secrets goes beyond blue and green, and it has become a major, if unspoken, national security concern. Wang and Chen’s behavior has made waves, but it is not such a big deal as it may seem. It has made waves because it is the first case in which Presidential Office staff have been implicated as informants for China, and because the leaked information about arrangements for the presidential handover ceremony, among other things, included details of the president’s movements, including times and locations.

Since such information about a head of state would be vital for a decapitation strike, the authorities of any country will attempt to keep it confidential. In that sense, it is a big deal.

On the other hand, information about a president’s schedule is known to his security guards, and journalists can find out about it easily by just asking. Although such information is sensitive, it is not hard to get. In that sense, this leak was no big deal at all. If Chen is really an informant, then he is only one of many legislative assistants who play that role.

This is by no means a new problem. Many years ago there was a case in which a legislator’s assistant was investigated and prosecuted for helping China get hold of budgets from the ministries of defense and foreign affairs. Later the Chinese went so far as to directly ask legislators for confidential budget information.

Since the signing of a joint declaration between then-KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in 2005, the two parties have become as close as members of the same family and have held a series of open forums.

Meanwhile, Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), chairman of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (海基會), is at liberty to pop over to Shenzhen for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) whenever he feels like it. In the past, China relied on informants — KMT party workers or reporters — to find out what was being discussed by the KMT’s Central Standing Committee. Nowadays Beijing gets reports direct from the source both before and after committee meetings.

In the past, Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office relied for its information on academics specializing in Taiwan affairs who could visit Taiwanese to make inquiries. Now all they have to do is pick up the phone and call their high-ranking contacts in Taiwan’s national security apparatus. Many of those higher-ups are people who not so long ago were visiting China every few days, or seeing off and welcoming people who regularly traveled across the strait — people who, as the Chinese like to say, get their rice on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The problem is that, while the rank and file face penalties if they leak confidential information, those at the top can get away with it. When senior officials do this kind of thing, they can rationalize it in terms of “promoting cross-strait understanding” or “reducing hostilities.” If your average civil servant tries the same thing, it is a crime.

Things have moved on since Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) became president. As his government leans closer and closer to China and the line between “them” and “us” gets blurred, we are going to see more and more junior civil servants following their masters’ example. In the past, at least people who leaked secrets knew they were doing something wrong. Now they actually take pride in believing that they have done something good for China and Taiwan.

When Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin visited Taiwan last November, he was treated as an honored guest of state, and police were ordered to remove national flags from roadsides for fear of offending him. China, it seems, is no longer an enemy country, but rather one to which Taiwan owes allegiance.

How could it be a crime to pass reports to one’s senior ally? At a welcome banquet for Chen, People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) congratulated him for having friendly connections in every corner of Taiwan, which sounds like public approval of China’s united front strategy.

Who is to say, then, whether civil servants are harming Taiwan’s interests if they leak information, or making a positive contribution to promoting cross-strait relations?

The KMT government is now planning to greatly reduce restrictions on civil servants visiting China, and to allow Taiwanese embassies abroad to have contacts with Chinese diplomats.

The way things are going, we can expect to see more and more civil servants follow the example of our leaders and taking it upon themselves to do a little something to promote cross-strait relations.

If the incident involving Wang Ren-bing and Chen Pin-jen knocks some sense into Ma and his government, it may not be such a bad thing after all.

Liang Wen-chieh is deputy director of the New Society for Taiwan (台灣新社會智庫).
　

Democracy doesn’t end after the elections
　

By Michael Hsiao 蕭新煌
Thursday, Jan 22, 2009, Page 8

The strong cold front that swept across Taiwan last week was not enough to stop people from attending a forum organized by the Taiwan Thinktank. As for so many other Taiwanese, the cold weather was of little importance compared with their worries about whether Taiwan’s democracy will make it through its severe winter.

The forum brought together professors who have devoted most of their lives to the struggle for democracy, chairpersons of political opposition parties who have been fighting against the one-party state, young academics who rarely participate in activities outside of their classrooms, research rooms or conference rooms, and students too young to remember the authoritarian system. They all agreed that the results of the legislative and presidential elections held early last year indeed have resulted in democratic regression in Taiwan.

The only contribution that China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) made to Taiwan was probably the fact that his visit alerted many people to how the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in just seven months has paralyzed the nation’s legislative supervision, let police brutality run amok and impaired the independence of the judiciary.

Any of this was unimaginable during the past eight years. It is even less acceptable to see that the government’s arrogance and unscrupulous behavior may have sprung from its landslide victories in democratic elections, and that it is this that has given the government the boldness to use the state apparatus to oppress human rights in Taiwan and externally to use the KMT-Chinese Communist Party platform to erode the nation’s sovereignty.

While the purpose of a transfer of political power is to consolidate human rights and sovereignty, the KMT-led government has done the exact opposite.

As it managed to secure a two-thirds majority in the legislative elections and win more than 50 percent of the vote in the presidential election, it is hard to challenge its democratic legitimacy. It is precisely this that is the source of our worries.

We first thought Taiwan’s democracy was on the road to irreversible progress since 2000, but we have now painfully come to realize two things. Many aspects of Taiwan’s democratic reforms are incomplete.

Old systems and mindsets that were not abandoned over the past eight years have staged a rapid comeback.

We have also come to realize that we cannot rely on victories in democratic elections alone to put us on the road toward democratic transformation.

This is a mistake that the Democratic Progressive Party, the former ruling party and now biggest opposition party, must recognize, and it is the party’s unshakable responsibility to resolve the consequences of this mistake.

Although elections certainly play an important role in democracy, only by insisting on democratic reforms and the development of human rights can we help Taiwan consolidate its democratic foundation.

All Taiwanese concerned over the nation’s future must have the courage to take action in the face of Taiwan’s democratic regression. Carrying out democratic reforms is not a dinner party.

Although Taiwanese democracy is suffering through a severe winter, we should unite various social forces and equip ourselves with knowledge.

Only then can we generate a force capable of bringing public attention to Taiwan’s democratic crisis and preventing the government from continuing to violate human rights so that we can put Taiwanese democracy back on the right track.

Michael Hsiao is director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies at Academia Sinica.