My meeting with Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese doctor who dared speak the truth about SARS
"To get by in China, a citizen learns to adjust to the gulf between the truth and the official truth. Officially, China is a 'People's Republic' that puts the worker first. Officially, China respects human rights. Officially, China's media report the news freely. Those who call attention to the gulf between these official truths and the unhappy reality are labeled confused, unpatriotic or evil — because, officially, no gulf exists."
This was how I began Time magazine's 2003 "Asian Newsmaker of the Year" citation for Dr. Jiang Yanyong, a Chinese military surgeon, who died March 11 at the age of 91.
The news Jiang made that year was exposing the Chinese government's cover-up of Beijing's outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Just as COVID-19 would be in 2020, SARS was a deadly respiratory illness caused by a then-novel coronavirus. To Jiang, his act simply upheld "the most rudimentary standards" of his profession. It forced a collision of fact with official lies and created the space for other officials and doctors to tell the truth. This led to the ouster of China's health minister and Beijing's mayor — an unprecedented if tacit concession of error on the part of China's leaders — and saved an untold number of
