Who's to Blame? The Jilin mess has ruined Hu's candor campaign.

Byline: Melinda Liu and Jonathan Ansfield

A 43-year-old apparatchik, Wang Wei wasn't the type to make headlines. Just a few months ago, he'd become the city of Jilin's deputy mayor responsible for, among other things, industrial management and work safety. But the day after a Nov. 13 benzene-plant explosion in the city killed five people and wounded dozens, Wang was thrust into the spotlight. The blast "did not produce large-scale pollution," he reassured a packed press conference. "Water [quality] has not changed." In fact, nearly 100 tons of carcinogenic chemicals had been dumped into the Songhua River, a source of drinking water for nearly 4 million downstream residents in Harbin. There, authorities had to shut city water taps for days to avoid a catastrophe. By late November, it was clear regional officials had spent the first ten days after the blast playing down the toxic threat. To get to the bottom of the cover-up, Beijing dispatched investigators to Jilin. Just before they arrived last Tuesday, Wang Wei was found dead at his home. Local sources said he'd committed suicide.

Wang's death was conspicuously absent from domestic newspaper headlines--on orders from President Hu Jintao himself, say Chinese journalists. The press clampdown is just one gauge of the extent to which Hu's regime is scrambling to contain the damage--political, diplomatic and economic--from the chemical spill. Millions of ordinary Chinese downstream from Jilin were enraged by government dissembling and delays; Beijing also had to apologize to Russia for the 145-km-long toxic spill, which was due to reach the Siberian city of Khabarovsk this week. Meanwhile back in Jilin, Vice Mayor Wang was set up to take the fall for the ham-handed local effort to gloss over the crisis, say two Chinese sources close to officials involved. "The Jilin provincial government came to the con-clusion that Wang Wei should be held entirely responsible," says one. "He decided to commit suicide to prove he was innocent."

The current mess is a setback for Hu's efforts to beef up accountability and transparency in China. It has also revived prickly questions such as "whether or not ordinary citizens have the right to decide what levels of government to blame for neglecting official duties," says Prof. Mao Shoulong, an expert on government administration at People's University.

The death of Wang Wei--who was due to be questioned and could have incriminated other ...