Did SARS make China a more global player?
This week in PLoS Medicine we continue our series on Global Health Diplomacy with a case study examining whether the SARS epidemic was a “watershed” for China’s engagement in global health diplomacy. The case study, by Lai-Ha Chan from the University of Technology Sydney and colleagues from Peking University, is the third in six articles in the series. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was the first global epidemic of the 21st Century, causing mass panic but also generating a discourse on health insecurity around the world. Dr. Chan and colleagues argue that the SARS epidemic exposed a fundamental shortcoming of China’s public health surveillance system and forced China to realize that public health is not merely a domestic issue that can be isolated from foreign policy concerns. The authors caution, however, that China’s reframing of health as a global public good has been tempered by its sensitivity to foreign interference to its internal affairs, a standpoint that will no dou
