TOMORROW a controversial Chinese doctor from Hong Kong will become director-general of the World Health Organisation. Margaret Chan says her top priorities will be to lift standards of health in Africa and among women generally challenges which will require considerable political savvy, not to mention political and professional independence for which she has not always been renowned.
China is ecstatic. The People's Republic lobbied hard for Chan's candidacy and promoted her "outstanding leadership" as Hong Kong's director of health during the bird flu crisis of 1997-98 and the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in 2003. More recently she has overseen communicable disease strategies as an assistant director of WHO.
But in Hong Kong, anger at Chan's failure to respond to SARS in time still runs deep. Her tardy handling of the bird flu outbreak in 1997 was also thought to owe too much to perceived political proprieties.
In 2003, it was the WHO which took the pivotal role in forcing China to act on SARS. But for six long weeks a secretive Beijing had ignored the WHO entreaties. Never mind that there was ample advance warning, as frightening tales of a dreaded new pneumonia emanated from southern China.
Under the "high degree of autonomy" provisions of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Hong Kong Government had a right and a duty to act on health on behalf of Hong Kong people, independently of mainland sensitivities. But in 2003, the Hong Kong Government led by the unpopular Tung Chee Hwa, to whom Chan answered, put relations with Beijing first. Chan herself delayed quarantining an infected housing bloc, lest it affect Hong Kong's reputation.
The 2004 cross-party Hong Kong Legislative Council Select Committee investigating the SARS crisis held Chan "responsible for the failure of the infectious disease surveillance system" and for not attaching sufficient importance to evidence of an atypical pneumonia epidemic in neighbouring Guandong, where there had been frenzied buying of antiseptic vinegar months before the Hong Kong Government acted. Chan was found to have not been "proactive" and her performance was judged "not satisfactory".
In late 1997, Chan famously downplayed the significance of avian flu by announcing that she ate chicken every day. Two weeks later she acted decisively, but belatedly, to cull 1.5million Hong Kong chickens. Chan insists she has learned from these painful experiences. Indeed, she received international praise for handling later bird flu crises.
China now happily boasts the appointment of a Chinese national to head a United Nations agency whose workings depend fundamentally on government transparency, on a free press, and on ethics which transcend commercial pragmatism. Yet in recent controversies, China has jealously defended its national sovereignty against external political interference.
Chinese officials still regard much scientific data even on bird flu as a state secret. Last year, scientists from Hong Kong University and Memphis published claims that a new "Fujian" strain of bird flu virus had become prevalent in South-East Asia.
Julie Hall, from the WHO office in Beijing, slammed China's Agriculture Ministry for refusing to share samples of the new strain with WHO. China replied that in fact the strain was old, and that the American researchers had illegally stolen their intellectual property and not abided by mainland laws on scientific research.
So it was welcome news when one day after Chan's election in November, China finally agreed to repeated WHO requests to share long-sought bird flu specimens with a WHO collaboration centre in the US. After all, Chan herself had long demanded it.
It is obvious that Chan's social provenance is not the mainland but Hong Kong, where a deep enthusiasm for criticising governments, the presence of an independent media and a largely corruption-free civil service remain.
She insists she will act independently as head of the WHO. "Now I'm elected as the WHO's director-general, I no longer carry my nationality on my sleeve. I leave it behind," she says.
No one doubts that Chan's appointment was political, with support garnered from developing African nations, and unusually publicly from the United States, at a time when other Sino-American diplomacy was focused on North Korea.
Another challenge for Chan beyond the problems of Africa will be that of preventable first world illnesses such as heart disease, which are set to afflict developing countries as they adopt first world lifestyles.
Lessons learned in Hong Kong could beget global opportunity not least for mainland Chinese political culture to become less secretive.
And perhaps even for the civic tail in Hong Kong to wag the northern dragon.
Robin Fitzsimons is a freelance writer.
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