CHINA: The show Riverdance has cancelled its long-awaited tour of China where it was chosen to kick-off the month-long Meet in Beijing arts festival on April 28th amid growing alarm over SARS. Jasper Becker in Beijing reports
Panic over the SARS epidemic is bringing normal life to halt in Beijing as people stay at home, avoid shops and other public venues. The usual traffic jams are easing, and people are abandoning the city's overcrowded buses and trains unless they are wearing surgical masks.
Despite a stream of reassuring government statements, schools and universities are beginning to cancel classes.
President Hu Jintao has ordered health officials to stop covering up the SARS epidemic amid reports of hundreds of hidden cases as the virus claimed four more lives in Hong Kong.
President Hu's intervention came during an emergency meeting of the Communist Party's highest decision-making body following criticism of China's handling of the crisis.
He warned that the battle against SARS, which has killed at least 170 people and infected over 3,200 in some 30 countries, would be long and difficult.
The meeting of China's elite nine-member Politburo Standing Committee "explicitly warned against the covering up of SARS cases and demanded the accurate, timely and honest reporting of the SARS situation".
However, the government declined to report the view of World Health Organisation experts that the city is hiding an extra 200 or so cases in its military hospitals and on Thursday repeated that there were just 34 cases so far.
The capital was expected to play host to a stream of visits by world leaders, including British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair and French President Mr Jacques Chirac, anxious to assess the new leadership in China. All these have been cancelled or delayed.
Beijing has not formally announced these cancellations, and is still hiding the news that foreigners are reluctant to come.
There will be disappointment that Riverdance is not coming especially as the show was preferred to Andrew Lloyd Weber's Cats musical and the Rolling Stones. It was highlighted as the opening act in a new performing arts festival in China's capital, perhaps because former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji fell for it when he was taken to a special performance during his September 2001 visit to Dublin.
Official praise has been showered on the show both by Chinese television and papers like China Daily which ran a full page article marvelling how it was "touching people in distant places".
Beijing is now busy trying to attract top attractions from around the world as it tries to rival Shanghai not only as a world class centre for commerce and sport but also for the arts.
With President Jiang Zemin backing the construction of a lavish new theatre designed by French architects in the centre of the city, China is also trying to learn how to create a popular arts scene to go with it.