Mexican Detainees in China

Chinese government do have arguments with many counterparts. Japan, France, United States, to name a few. But Mexico is one of the last countries we would contemplate. But recently it happened. (BBC)

A Mexican passenger carrying H1N1 virus has flown to China to Hong Kong with a stop in Shanghai. This news came as a shock and the Chinese popular anxiety pressed the government to take a stronger and quicker action. As a result, the government did a thorough search and found every passenger, which is quite an achievement. All of them are now still being detained. Good news is none of them currently show any symptoms.

When being confident that it has dealt with the situation better than with SARS, a protest from Mexican government has been received for unreasonable detain of its citizens. Though on Xinhuanet News, President Calderon still thanked Chinese for the humanitarian aid, he is clearly not happy. Foreigners, with the exception of journalists, generally have been well treated since 1978. Being detained in such an amount is somewhat unprecedented.

The problem is clearly the populism. Both government is trying to do what's popular, while unfortunately it may not be what's right. Isolation and quarantine of those passengers for a short period of time is necessary, but it should be done as quick as possible to make those visitors suffer less discomfort. And the Mexican president, trying to calm his people down, has hurriedly declared the decline of the epidemic, which is still too early to tell. His intention is understandable, but other countries' concerns are real, and shouldn't be met with such strong criticism, for a verbal conflict is the last thing Mexico wants during this kind of emergency.

Probably the swine flu will never truly arrive in China, but its damage has already been done to the relation with Mexico.