Jiang Yanyong, doctor who exposed China’s SARS coverup, dies

Jiang Yanyong, a military surgeon heralded within China for exposing Beijing’s hush-up of the SARS epidemic in 2003 but who was later detained and silenced after using his renown to seek justice for the government’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, died March 11 in Beijing. He was 91.

His death was reported in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post and by Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia, who told Western news agencies that Jiang died of pneumonia at a military hospital.

On mainland China, news of Jiang’s death or other references to him were censored, highlighting how he remained a perceived political threat two decades after he came to public attention.

“I’m not a hero,” Jiang was quoted by the state-run Beijing News in 2013 as describing his SARS disclosures. “All I did was say a few honest things.”

While long out of the public eye and muzzled by Chinese authorities, Jiang’s defiance took on renewed historical significance during the coronavirus pandemic. Parallels were drawn with Beijing’s early coverups of infection numbers with COVID and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS was blamed for more than 800 deaths before it was mostly contained in 2003.

And in late 2019 — weeks before COVID was identified as a global threat — an eye doctor in Wuhan, Li Wenliang, called attention to the emerging “SARS-like” public health crisis. He was hailed on Chinese social media as an heir to Jiang’s whistleblower legacy. Li died of COVID in February 2020, and he was declared among the official “martyrs” for battles against covid.

Jiang’s challenge against the state over SARS reporting brought mixed responses from leaders. State media called him an “honest doctor” and “SARS hero.” Many Chinese viewed him as a rare risk-taker among the coddled elite.

Jiang Yanyong was born in Hangzhou on Oct. 4, 1931, and raised in nearby Shanghai in a family whose wealth came from banking. He said he decided to pursue a career in medicine after watching his aunt die of tuberculosis.

He studied at Yenching University in Beijing in the years after Mao Zedong’s communist forces took power in 1949. He received his medical training at Peking Union Medical College and later enlisted in the medical corps of the Chinese military.