HONG KONG -- An ugly new strain of atypical pneumonia has medical scientists working overtime in their research laboratories across the world, as they strive to discover why a growing number of patients are now suffering and dying in many nations from this previously unknown virus that is being blamed for the death of at least 53 people.
As the global media indulge their obsession on what many world citizens perceive to be imperialistic American aggression against Iraq, too few -- even here in Hong Kong -- have paid sufficient attention to what could so easily have become a form of indirect Chinese aggression against humanity through systemic incompetence.
The situation brings to mind a highly charged debate within Hong Kong in the mid-1980s. An anxious still-British Hong Kong was just getting used to its future fate of being returned to China. The horrendous meltdown at Chernobyl in the the Soviet Union was at that time only a recent memory. China announced plans for a nuclear power station to be constructed by China at Daya Bay, 52 km northwest of Hong Kong.