Clear convictions

Cao Siyuan, the father of China's state-owned enterprise (SOE) bankruptcy law, does not mince words when it comes to Sars. For him, there is only one way to prevent another health crisis: adopt a revolutionary transparency law that requires government officials to release information to the public.

'In 1989, when we enacted the state secrets law, violators of which can be put to death, it became clear we also should have an open information law,' says Mr Cao, a senior researcher at the State Council in the 1980s under the premiership of Zhao Ziyang. 'Someone who breaks the secrets law should be punished, but someone who breaks the open information law should be punished as well. This is fair. Our nation should put even more focus on keeping the free flow of information.'

Hard times have always spawned harsh solutions from the 58-year-old scholar and former Communist Party School professor, whose laughing buddha belly and small stature (he is 1.6 metres tall) belies the tough measures he has introduced. Mr Cao is a champion crusader who helped transform the mainland's lumbering state-owned enterprises. He is also credited with forcing the National People's Congress (NPC) to open its doors in the late 80s to news coverage.

His latest challenge is to push for the adoption of a transparency law, which he plans to propose to the NPC next year. When Mr Cao first put forward the idea to the NPC shortly before the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the NPC ignored him. The Communist Party has since shunned him because he continues to play the role of political reformer when it has long been unfashionable to do so within party ranks.

In recent weeks, he has denounced the party for its cover-up of the Sars epidemic. Under pressure from the international media, senior leaders sacked the Beijing mayor and minister of health on April 20 and admitted the number of infections was 10 times the official figures.

What surprised many inside and outside China was the severity of the problem. By early May, more than 15,000 people were quarantined in Beijing and the number of Sars cases had skyrocketed to more than 3,000, 100 times the official figures officials had released just two weeks earlier.