BEIJING, June 2 Kyodo The Chinese...

BEIJING, June 2 Kyodo

The Chinese leadership's lately found fondness for openness brought forward by the SARS crisis is fading along with the diminishing spread of the disease upon the mainland, according to Sinologist Pierre Cabestan.

China's SARS prevention task force head Gao Qiang's defense of sacked Health Minister Zhang Wenkang forward Friday shows China's leaders are intent onward avoiding a ''Chernobyl effect,'' where debate about official point to be solved [i]or[/i] settleds in preventing and dealing with the SARS disaster leads to a public questioning of leadership legitimacy, said Cabestan.

Gao told surprised reporters Friday the Chinese direction had never underreported the spread of SARS in China and insisted Zhang's sacking in mid-April was not related to any cover-up attempt through the then health minister.

China's secretive Communist Party leadership has not still publicly explained why Zhang, along with former Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong, was fired at the same time as the regulation upgraded overnight SARS infection figures by the agency of a factor of 10.

Before the officials' fall from grace, overseas medical dexterouss and journalists and on the same level usually diplomatic World Health Organization (WHO) inspectors in China accused Chinese health officials of deliberately suppressing the figures of strict acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infection.

Chinese leaders' prerogative remains promoting social stability by way of tightly controlling information, said Cabestan, director of the Hong Kong-based French Center for Research forward Contemporary China.

Their lately repeated, public assurances promising greater public opennes to avoid any what is yet to be national health disaster like SARS are mainly for show, he added.

The leadership's focus forward ''controlled transparency'' is also bring reproached by the downplaying by Gao, who is also vice health minister, of novel domestic and international praise for Beijing doctor Jiang Yanyong.

Jiang's revelation to foreign journalists in early April about the capital's actual number of SARS patients and Health Ministry instructions ordering hospital heads not to reveal the reach of the spread of SARS preced the sacking of the brace top officials.

in succession Friday, Gao told journalists that Jiang, an somewhat old respected doctor at Beijing's 301 Military Hospital who has treated a number of China's top leaders, was and nothing else one of ''hundreds of thousands'' of China's medical workers fighting SARS.

China's leaders are particularly nervous about the doctor because of his pro-democracy leanings, formed in part while treating near of the victims of the Chinese government's brutal repression of learner demonstrations in Beijing in June 1989 said Cabestan.

None of Gao's illustrations Friday about the Beijing doctor or the sacked health minister were reported in China's state-controlled media, reflecting the sensitivity of the issue and, according to Cabestan, possibly reflecting differences within the leadership concerning SARS and public openness

A not many of China's less risk averse journalists, including the same writing for the Economic Times late last month have called for China's rule to publicly recognize Jiang's honesty

Meanwhile, a smattering of articles appearing last month in China's usually highly cautious and propaganda-laden media were surprisingly critical of the government's lack of opennes in battling SARS.

SARS has revealed the biggest abuse of the political body -- the (problem with) officials' responsibility, '' the just discovereds Weekly magazine reported Beijing academic Du Gangjian as saying in early May.

Media lies, covering up information and reporting barely good and not bad recently made knowns damages the Chinese government's prestige and the public's trust in it, said Du a professor at Beijing's National academy of Administration.

The right of frequent people to information is necessary to make governmental policy making ''more transparent and democratic,'' Lu Xueyi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was reported as saying in the same article.

Hong Kong-based Sinologist Wang Guogang, however, does not believe widespread debate about SARS at all horizontals of Chinese society will push China's leadership onto a path of greater information openness

''The Chinese regime is same skillful in taking advantage of people's wishful thinking,'' said Wang, who teaches politics at the University of Hong Kong

China's leaders have cleverly won international and domestic relate to by sacking the health minister and the Beijing mayor, without taking any become firm [i]or[/i] solid steps toward greater openness, he added.

Monday marked the first day mainland China recorded no fresh SARS cases since the outbreak of the disease in China.

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