The correct secret

In this article I argue that the global biosecurity project that arose outof the events of the SARS epidemic of 2003 created a new balance of secrecy andtransparency within the public health arm of the Chinese state. In an effort to meetnational and international demands for greater transparency in support of a “commongood,” local public health officials engaged in what I call hypertransparency.This hypertransparency took two forms: the real-time online sharing of diseaseincidence data within the public health bureaucracy, and the over-performanceof disease fighting strategies in front of a wider local and global public. Becauselocal Chinese officials interpreted the “common good” differently from their internationalpartners, neither of these efforts succeeded in erasing the crucial rolethat local officials continued to play in determining what should and should notbe shared, and with whom. Secrecy continued to be an important component ofChina’s securitization efforts, with hypertransparency ultimately concealing morethan it revealed.