Playmaker China
Disco
Disco: DX
Definition
The concession or sacrifice by a player of an element of its platform in order to preserve or advance its overall agenda or argument. The central tenet of a Disco is that forward progress cannot be achieved by the player unless or until the player first moves backward (i.e., one step back, two steps forward.)
Fiat
Fiat: FT
Definition
The declaration of information or demonstration of capability to a marketplace. Fiats are characteristically run without fanfare and rely on the position of the player or the merits of the declaration to shift a competitive dynamic.
SARS v. Swine Flu
August 20, 2009
Chinese Health Officials Learn from Mistakes
On issues of public health, China's modus-operandi used to be to Jam internal communication about potentially pandemic-forming diseases.
But after having been criticized (i.e., Call Out ) for its handling of SARS by global health officials, China changed the way it communicates about health related issues. Unlike six-years ago during SARS, officials are publicly informing its citizens, through the Fiat play, about the risks associated with H1N1 (aka, Swine Flu).
In so doing, the Chinese government has, in effect, run a veiled Disco to the rest of the world, saying: We know we screwed up with our handling of SARS. But we learned our lesson. We're going to do a much better job in handling swine-flu.
The result: No matter how bad swine-flu strikes China this flu-season, no one will be able to criticize China for not warning its citizens.
Posted by: John Koval
Photo Credit: TherealBarackObama.com
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Comments
Don't Fan the Flame
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In true blog fashion, "two e-props" to the Chinese government for executing AND evaluating the health issues at stake. If nothing else, this is one instance when the notoriously controlling federation was able to survey a potential crisis and use past situations to avoid nationwide panic. Generally, I believe that the "fiat" is the best play when information must be communicated to a large public. There is no use in fanning the flame in times of health crises.
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I think it's interesting to
I think it's interesting to look at China's handling of SARS compared with the current Swine Flu. When there was a SARS outbreak, I remember heavily associating the pandemic with images of people in China wearing face masks, and I could only assume that the people were well-informed based off their appearance.
Now, as people around the world are struggling to deal with Swine Flu, I have seen images of people around the United States flooding into clinics for vaccinations, etc. I know that our government has been very proactive in dealing with the issue, and I think part of this could be due to the fact that they saw how crazy people got over SARS/The Avian Flu and knew that they too could not make that mistake. Maybe China did make a mistake in publicly informing their citizens about SARS, but it seems that not only did they learn from this, but so did the rest of the world, and just in time for another pandemic disease.
Radar Jamming
John is absolutely correct that this is China's strategy: Disco (admitting fault) and Fiat (unglamourous declaration of facts). This is the best possible strategy for China, which would undoubtedly be criticized if it took a "do nothing" approach with the current pandemic.
My query, then, is will China keep up its attempts to provide free flowing information, or will it revert back to its classic Jamming strategy? Its government is known for doing this, and I would not be surprised if they defaulted to this strategy again. However, doing so would outrage many publics (any Western journalists that get wind of it would be all over it). This would not only undo any progress made by China's current strategy, but it would cause even more damage than if they had said nothing, because publics will feel betrayed.
I would also not be surprised if China used a Filter strategy, where it pretends to be fully disclosed when it is not -- a key example of this being that during the last Summer Olympics, it closed down all factories for the week so that the air would be clean instead of thick with fog. Unsightly slums were also conveniently bulldozed. This made China appear to be a wonderful place to be and that it had nothing to hide, when it actually had a lot to cover up.