Reuters Special Report: Before coronavirus, China bungled swine epidemic with secrecy

Reuters revealed how secrecy had hobbled the nation’s response to African swine fever, an epidemic that has killed millions of pigs. Reuters examination found that swine fever’s swift spread was made possible by China’s systemic under-reporting of outbreaks. And even today, bureaucratic secrecy and perverse policy incentives continue undermining Chinese efforts to defeat one of the worst livestock epidemics in modern history. Beijing’s secretive early handling of the coronavirus epidemic has troubling similarities to its missteps in containing African swine fever, but with the far higher stakes of a human infection.