I’ve been in Beijing during three “special times” over the last 15 years: the tail end of the martial law period in 1989, the period when the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, the war in Iraq, and the current SARS crisis. (Hmmh – reminds me of an old joke in which a dying husband recounts the way his wife stayed with him during all of his setbacks, ending with the punch line – “I’ve decided you’re bad luck.”). Each had a very different feeling about it, from the perspective of one American visiting China.   

·        The martial law period in December of 1989 was very dismal in many ways – there had been a sudden, huge drop in China’s relations with the West after almost a decade of opening up, people in Beijing were angry and depressed, the government was trying to impose the old political education on students and faculty, and it was difficult to get information from the outside world.

·        The embassy bombing was perhaps the most difficult time to be a foreigner in Beijing. There were many banners around denouncing the United States, no one believed that it had been an accident (either this was done as part of the United States’ general efforts to put China down, or, in one theory, it had been done to provoke people in China to demonstrate against the U.S. in the hopes that such demonstrations would be put down, causing people here to turn against their own government). There was saturation TV coverage of the grief of the relatives of those died, the return of their coffins, etc. There was also a big gap between news in the outside world and what people knew here. I remember a frustrating period of about 5 days when Chinese people I met would ask why Clinton hadn’t called Jiang Zemin to apologize, even though he already had done so.

·        Presentation of the war in Iraq was also very different, as you might expect, from what you might see on Fox News in the U.S. TV promos showed juxtaposition of Iraq mothers marching to protest the war with marching US soldiers. The TV special reports on the war included a great deal of very admiring military reports about equipment and tactics that often overshadowed the disapproval of what the U.S. was doing. I was surprised to hear in online polls that the percent of people disapproving the war (usually 60-75% was as low as it was; I’m not sure it have been much different in many parts of the US). A big change is the way that the Internet has really taken over cities like Beijing; it’s a very information-rich environment in a way it wasn’t even 5 years ago.

·        SARS brings many of the issues of information and control to a head. There are many Chinese language sources of information and misinformation; the cellphone-based SMS (short message system) text messages lends itself to spreading rumors; most students know ways to get to internet sites blocked by the government. At the same time, old ways die hard, and the government still seems to think it can manage information more than it really can. Stores have been really crowded, with people stocking up on all kinds of nonperishable staples. The government announced that food supplies are ample, but given recent experience this may only lead to *more* panic buying.  Otherwise, it remains a very beautiful Spring. I noticed many more people out exercising when I ran this morning (the ubiquitous posters on SARS prevention emphasize exercising as a way of staying in good health), and the relative lack of traffic means it’s easy and pleasant to get around what had been a very crowded city.

The fact remains that this is a virus, and there isn’t likely to be a cure for it. So, like other viruses, it’s likely to spread around the world and we’re going to have to learn to live with it. I hope it leads to some needed improvements in sanitation here, but I also suspect that China will develop some methods of dealing with SARS economically that will be more relevant to how most of the world responds than is whatever the U.S. and Canada do. People here seem to think that it will somehow pass in a matter of weeks or months and that they can then get on with their lives. I’m skeptical of the former, but I think the latter is certainly the case.

I’ve seen claims in various places that this is likely to be “China’s Chernobyl,” leading to a major change in how the government and society work here. Perhaps it will, but I’m skeptical. One ringing moment in the big nationally-televised press conference last weekend (see below) was when the briefer pointed out that China had accumulated a strong cash position and had the money to invest in solving this problem. That wasn’t true 20 years ago, and it makes a very big difference.