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China learns cover-up lessons

Willy Wo-Lap Lam, CNN Senior China Analyst

Jiang (center) and Hu (second right) with relatives of the dead officers.
Jiang (center) and Hu (second right) with relatives of the dead officers.

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HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- The deadly submarine accident off the Bohai Sea may have an impact on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) that is comparable to that of the pneumonia epidemic on civilian authorities.

The naval mishap -- believed to have occurred in mid-April -- could also hasten the retirement of ex-president Jiang Zemin from the policy-setting Central Military Commission (CMC).

On the surface, the CMC and senior generals seemed to have learnt the lesson of the cover-up of outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Last Friday night's brief Xinhua news agency dispatch about the disaster that killed all 70 crew members on board diesel-fueled vessel amounted to the first time ever that the Chinese military had owned up to the loss of a submarine.

The official CCTV on Monday also showed CMC Chairman Jiang and President Hu Jintao making investigations last Saturday inside the doomed Submarine 361, which had been towed back to the northeast seaport of Dalian.

There was also emotional footage of the leaders comforting the relatives of the dead seamen.

However, this display of Chinese-style glasnost does not seem to measure up to the stringent standards of full disclose to which Beijing has committed itself after the SARS crisis.

While the PLA had cited "mechanical problems" for the mishap on board the Ming-class sub, it has refused to give the date of the accident or the exact causes.

This is despite President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao's pledge in the past month or so that the people's zhiqing quan ("right to know") must be respected.

For example, a new regulation published last week urged all local administrations to report major food poison incidents within six hours.

Kurst tragedy

The CMC's Soviet-style penchant for secrecy -- which recalls the news blackout Moscow imposed on the demise of the Russian sub Kurst in 2000 -- seems all the more obsolete given that rumors about a major naval incident within the North Sea Fleet had appeared in some Chinese Internet chat-rooms late last month.

No less important is the question of responsibility.

Despite having benefited from hefty budget boosts, the PLA navy has a record of mismanagement -- and accidents and near-misses – the past several years.

For example, there are reports in the international media as well as on Chinese websites about naval personnel failing to do proper maintenance work on the expensive Kilo-class submarines that Beijing had bought from Russia since the late 1990s.

Western military analysts have noted that a couple of Chinese subs in the past decade had simply vanished in deep waters -- and naval headquarters were unable to recover them.

A few PLA heads are likely to roll in the wake of the high-profile and much applauded sacking of the minister of health and the Beijing mayor last month over the mishandling of SARS.

The military analysts have pointed out that human errors -- and lack of proper oversight by senior naval personnel -- might have been responsible for the horrific accident last month.

For example, while the Ming class submarine is licensed to carry 50-odd crew members, 70 were on board.

Boeing bugged

The 73-year-old Jiang, however, is notorious for his hush-hush attitude toward the misdemeanors of the PLA brass.

Take, for instance, the bugging of the Boeing aircraft which was originally destined to become Chinese-style Air Force One in late 2001.

While some 30 PLA staffers, mostly from the General Logistics Department, were reportedly detained and court-martialed, the incident was never reported in the Chinese media.

Moreover, most of the officers in question were penalized in connection with taking kick-backs, not conniving at or abetting the grave security breach.

No full-scale investigation relating to espionage is believed to have been launched by the CMC.

The other notable example of secrecy -- and lax discipline -- has to do with the intelligence unit of the General Staff Department (GSD).

In 2000, a few officers from this so-called counter-espionage outfit, including America specialist Senior Colonel Xu Junping, defected to the U.S.

A number of GSD intelligence experts were also involved in the multi-billion yuan smuggling and corruption scandal that centered on the southeast seaport of Xiamen.

Yet the CMC under Jiang has yet to give either the public or the army a full account of these crimes as well as security lapses.

Political analysts in Beijing said the submarine disaster could hasten the full retirement of the ex-president, who has been repeatedly criticized for hanging on to the CMC slot despite having given up all his other party and state positions last year.

The CMC chief has recently come under fire for the PLA's highly questionable role in connection with the pneumonia epidemic.

As Professor Maochun Yu, China expert at the U.S. Naval Academy pointed out, "the PLA is regarded by the public as the main culprit in the SARS cover-up."

"It was the military hospitals that lied to the outside world about the number of [atypical pneumonia] cases," he added.

Moreover, Dr Zhang Wenkang, the sacked health minister, used to be a veteran PLA health administrator and Jiang crony.

It was not until April 26, more than five months after atypical pneumonia had broken out in southern China, that the CMC chairman made his first public statement about SARS.

The patriarch was then resting in the safe haven of Shanghai, which has apparently been spared the brunt of the SARS onslaught.

Moreover, it was only after Jiang's Shanghai statement on SARS that PLA generals as well as the military media gave their full support to efforts by civilian authorities to combat the pandemic.

Particularly compared to the "close-to-the-masses" images projected by Hu and Wen, Jiang has given the impression of being out of touch and even imperial.

It is significant that Hu, who is one of three CMC vice-chairmen, seems ready to pounce on the submarine mishap as an opening for weeding out military dead wood.

In a note of condolence sent to the navy last weekend, the president pointed out that PLA must "seriously sum up and learn from the lesson of the accident," implying that responsible officers have to be identified and punished.

Hu himself does not need to shoulder any responsibility because it is well known that Jiang has kept him out of the military loop since 1999, when the 60-year-old Fourth Generation leader was made CMC vice-chairman.

Xinhua on Monday quoted Hu as vowing to "assiduously propagate the lofty spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice [exhibited] by the officers and sailors of Submarine 361."

What the president may perhaps be more interested in is getting rid of PLA leaders whose negligence and mismanagement had made possible mishaps such as last month's horrendous accident.


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