The typhoon that hit Fujian province last month was likely much worse than originally reported by the Chinese government:

Clearly, this fishing village and others near the mouth of a bay on
China’s southeast coast suffered catastrophic damage when Typhoon
Saomai blew through on the afternoon of Aug. 10, a Category 4 storm
packing sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. Yet the next day,
initial reports listed only 17 people dead and 138 missing in all of
Fujian Province.

By noon on Aug. 10, according to news reports
distributed nationwide, more than 500,000 people had been evacuated,
and five million others had been alerted to the impending danger
through short messages sent to cellphone users. The emergency response
was trumpeted as a triumph.

In the storm’s aftermath, however,
a very different account of events has gradually taken shape. Although
it is unlikely that an accurate death toll will ever be determined, the
actual numbers appear to far surpass the official totals. While
visiting the area two days after the storm struck, China’s vice
premier, Hui Liangyu, praised the local authorities for their “proper
direction, for effectively limiting the damage, for strong measures and
for orderly rescue work.”

But an internal report by the
official New China News Agency, compiled in the days after the storm
and intended just for the authorities, bluntly contradicted the
official picture. In succeeding days, the Chinese news media also took
an increasingly skeptical view of the official accounts.

After
consulting with local fishermen, these publications, among them Chinese
Newsweek, concluded that about 900 boats from the immediate area had
been lost at sea. Because each fishing boat typically carries a crew of
two, they estimated that some 2,000 people had died just in this
vicinity, where the storm hit hardest.

 Every government is concerned about its public image; no leader wants to be associated with disaster.  But disasters happen and trying to hide them – just as in the attempt to hide the Songhua River spill last year – almost never works in this era of radically decentralized and radically globalized communications flows.  So, why even try to lie?  You will almost certainly be found out.

     Of course, the likelihood of being found out is not the best reason to refrain from lying.   Rather, lying demonstrates a lack of sincerity on the part of political leaders – they are not "standing by their words," in a Confucian sense.  And when political leaders are not sincere, the interests of the people will not be served.  Plain and simple: lying is a symptom of bad leadership, bad policy, bad government.  As such, lying also suggests, following on my previous post, that the Mandate of Heaven is slipping away. 

     There is some irony here that we are talking about the Mandate of Heaven and a natural disaster.  When a typhoon hits, it could be understood, in traditional Chinese culture, as a sign that fate and destiny were working against the government.  But agency – the effort and humanity and will of individual leaders – always matters in Chinese philosophy.  Instead of worrying about the bad press that might flow from a terrible storm – especially after what happened to Bush after Katrina – good leadership would concentrate on providing the real assistance needed by people whose homes and businesses have been destroyed.  Lying creates an obstacle to action, and that perpetuates bad government.

     Lying thus reproduces the condition that it pretends does not exit: a fundamental disconnect between government and people that serves only the interests of the power-holding elite and hurts the society at large.  And with internets and Youtubes and cell phones and other widely-distributed communications technology, lying will be obviously on display for all to see, from rural Western Massachusetts to coastal Fujian province.