SARS

SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] penetrated China in spring of 2003, created havoc in the social society, exposed weaknesses within the political system and pushed the nation towards a crisis of confidence. At the same time the crisis revitalised the Party's position, brought people from different social stratum together and had a beneficial impact on the populace's knowledge on health related issues. What makes the SARS crisis in China interesting for further and deeper investigation is the method it chose to respond to its national crisis. They plan of response was indeed a retrogression back to "older" times, using methods and propaganda very much like those used during Mao Zedong and later Deng Xiaoping. The first step of response was denial and cover up of the real situation, which quickly turned to unprecedented transparency, as the magnitude of SARS became known. The Party and the government were quick to proclaim themselves as the bearer of the key knowledge and information on how to best fight the disease, this in sharp contrast to the political trend of more co-operation between the private and public sector and political transparency. The Party and government were doing so, according to their own statements, in the interest of the nation and the people. The government and the Party took swift actions when implementing measures to counter fight SARS. Various decrees on how to behave and what actions to take when fighting SARS were also issued. The propaganda campaign launched following the outbreak bore remnants of "older" rhetoric and pedagogics featuring keywords like: togetherness, confidence in the leadership, responsibility, esteem, the Masses, fight back and crush [during Mao Zedong reactionaries, contra-revolutionaries and the bourgeoisie were those element that were to be crushed or fought back]. The SARS crisis produced martyrs, heroes and model-citizens; this too is a trait from "older" times. The thesis discusses why a nation that has shrugged off its totalitarian and communistic past, broken the shackles of the explicit use of the Confucian tradition and entered the "modern" world and adopted western ways of thinking in the event of a crisis regress to a familiar reality and adopt confident measures. The thesis maintains and shows via empirical data and references to published material that the answer to this rather complex question is to be found in the combination of the light crisis of identification among contemporary Chinese, what I have chose to call: Kinesism, the tradition of togetherness and mass-mobilisation of the populace and totalitarianism and despotism. With those three forces working together SARS could finally be eradicated from the Chinese society. The thesis is written in Swedish