Risk Society Comes to China: SARS, Transparency and Public Accountability

Abstract

ASIANPERSPECTIVE, Vol. 27, No. 2,2003, pp. 241-251. Commentary RISK SOCIETY COMES TO CHINA: SARS, TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY Paul Thiers A Risk Society By now, it is clear that the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and its bureaucratic mismanagement is a politi­ cal, economic, and public-health nightmare for China. But the SARS crisis presents two important tests for the Chinese govern­ ment and, so far, it has failed only the first. The bureaucracy pre­ dictably botched the administration of the outbreak, leading with secrecy and denial, allowing the disease to spread further and faster than necessary, and losing any semblance of legitimacy in both the domestic and international community. The political leadership, however, has yet to indicate what lessons it will draw and what steps it will take in the long term. If it makes the right decisions, SARS could provide a context for addressing a long­ standing weakness in Chinese public administration. SARS occurs as a new leadership is attempting to consoli­ date power under a populist program, claiming to defend those left to bear the costs and risks of China's rapid growth and glob­ al integration. China's new premier, Wen Jiabao, spent Spring Festival in a Chinese coal mine, arguably the most risky occupa­ tional environment in the world. Hu Jintao, the new president, has spoken of the need to support hundreds of thousands of urban workers and poor farmers whose livelihoods are at risk from increased competition and low prices that China's acces­ 242 Paul Thiers sion to the World Trade Organization will bring in the next ten years. While it is still too early to tell, this could be a political platform, recognizing that industrialization, technology, and global market integration create risks—and that a government that fails to manage those risks, fails its own people and loses the confidence of the global community. Since these are specifi­ cally the bureaucratic failures of the SARS crisis, the long-term response will be a crucial test of the new political leadership. To understand the significance of the SARS crisis for Chinese politics, it is useful to consider German social theorist Ulrich Beck's concept of risk society.1 Examining the late 20th century social movement politics of nuclear power, environmental pol­ lution, and food safety scares such as mad cow disease, Beck argues that we have entered a new stage of modernity in which the definition, management, and allocation of risks replaces the generation and allocation of costs and benefits as the central theme of politics and science. Beck cites an emerging, world­ wide awareness that industrialization, technology, and global­ ization bring risks that nation-states, as the traditional arenas of policy making, are expected to address. But this same industrial­ ization, and particularly the new technologies and levels of global interaction that characterize it in our era, facilitate infor­ mation exchange and policy advocacy independently of nation­ state authority. Beck further argues that emerging networks of interaction below, above, and around the nation-state erode the state's monopoly on the definition and management of risk even as they increase pressure on the state to manage risk effectively. What is more, because risk is largely a function of public percep­ tion, state proclamations that a problem is under control can backfire. Non-state actors can challenge official assurances, lead­ ing to public distrust and anger toward state administrators. In democracies, risk society unravels the progressive-era model in which public administrators are seen as technical experts, insu­ lated from direct public pressure. For Beck, the only solution is to open up policy making and administration to ever greater 1. See Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Tozvards a New Modernity, trans. M. Ritter (London: Sage, 1993), and Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). Risk Society Comes to China 243 levels of public accountability. Of course, this presents the great­ est challenges for non-democratic systems that have relied on authoritarian models of science and politics to define and administer policy in risk-prone areas such as health, the envi­ ronment, and global market integration. Beck's argument has important implications for a country like China. At least since...