At the Epicentre: Hong Kong and the SARS Outbreak (review)

As time passes since the end of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in the summer of 2003, one finds more and more books published on SARS throughout the East Asia region. ¹These books cover the range of collective experience with SARS; provide scientific explanations of the epidemic for a lay audience; offer guidelines for citizens to protect themselves; criticize shortcomings in governmental, public health, and medical responses; and often conclude with policy recommendations to improve future responses to a comparable pandemic. Although most of this literature in the East Asia region is in Chinese, several regional assessments of SARS have been published in English in Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. ²

Just a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) removed Hong Kong from their list of SARS-affected areas on June 24, 2003, over half a million Hong Kong citizens took to the streets in protest. The demonstration of July 1 happened on the holiday commemorating the sixth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It was second in size only to the Hong Kong demonstrations protesting the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. The convergence of mainland secrecy and censorship over SARS and the Tung administration's incompetence, indifference, and lack of accountability dealing with the SARS epidemic brought Hong Kong citizens to the boiling point. Although the protests were a direct response to the anti-subversion Article 23 of the Basic Law-which would have curtailed freedom of the press and freedom of information by instructing Hong Kong to enact legislation against treason, secession, sedition, subversion, and theft of state secrets "on its own"-SARS had revealed the political weaknesses and ideological dangers of the Special Administration Region system itself. At the Epicentre: Hong Kong and the SARS Outbreaktakes the position that the lack of transparency from mainland officials directly contributed to over 1,700 SARS infections and 299 SARS related deaths in Hong Kong alone. Suddenly, the relatively abstract issues of freedom of the press and freedom of information became a concrete matter of life or death. The protests gained their force through widespread discontent with the Tung administration's mismanagement of the SARS crisis and with a renewed sense of vulnerability of Hong Kong as a Special Administration Region system bordering the "epicenter of new emerging viruses" in Guangdong province (p. 58).

The fourteen essays in At the Epicentreclarify the complex issues underlying this massive demonstration while simultaneously offering the best synthesis of Hong Kong's experience with SARS. By the end of 2004, East Asian government and civic institutions began to publish their own assessments of the SARS epidemic in their region. One of the earliest examples, A Defining Moment: How Singapore Beat SARS, is filled with color photographs, personal experiences, and moving accounts of victory. Commissioned by Singapore's Ministry of Information, Communications, and the Arts and published by the Singapore Institute of Policy Studies, this publication looks like a photo album and reads like a triumphal narrative. ³ At the Epicentrefits into this regional genre by virtue of its focus on Hong Kong's SARS experience, ⁴but its critical tone and independent perspectives significantly differ from the Singapore synthesis, reflecting the cities' different political systems and relationships with mainland China. The editor Christine Loh is the chief executive officer of the Civic Exchange in Hong Kong, an independent non-profit policy think tank established in 2000. The Civic Exchange takes as its mission to inform the public in Hong Kong about issues and events from the broadest possible perspective. This kind of independent civic organization committed to the right to know and concerns of the public does not exist in Singapore, mainland China, or even Taiwan. ⁵Furthermore, it offers sobering, incisive, and critical political perspectives otherwise scarce in the region...