Earthquake? We felt nothing

Scripps Howard News Service: China is catching up with the world's modern industrial nations a little too fast for its leaders' liking. While they relish China's spreading prosperity, economic growth and growing global influence, these benefits have come with -- and because of -- a diminishing central control of its sprawling populace.
The leaders yearn for the days when they controlled most everything, including natural disasters. Well, they didn't exactly control the actual floods, earthquakes and pestilence, but at least what was said about them.
Nostalgic for those days when the leaders could say what they wanted without fear of contradiction from the facts, the communist government is poised to enact a bill that, according to The Wall Street Journal, would ban reporting on "public emergencies without approval."
This is not intended to help the victims of a public emergency. They already know they are inundated, sick, living in wreckage or chemically spilled upon. It would restrict the media to the official version of events and forestall reporting on the government's response, or lack of it, to a disaster.
In 2002, a Chinese newspaper reported that the central government had tried to cover up an outbreak of the SARS virus and lied about its extent to international health officials. And, the Journal says, China's newspapers broke news of the nation's HIV/AIDS crisis that the leadership had hoped to keep under wraps.
The Gulf Coast hurricanes were not the U.S. government's finest hour but thanks to a long tradition of open government and a free press surely no one in authority ever entertained the idea of (a) denying to the world that Katrina ever happened or (b) claiming that the relief effort had been a total success. Honestly facing up to mistakes at least gives hope that they won't be repeated. China's leaders might want to mull that over before trying to muzzle the press in a way that will only hold them up to ridicule.