The Communist Party seems to have learned little from its mishandling of information during the 2003 Sars outbreak.

From the Horse’s Mouth:

Yesterday Imagethief mentioned that China’s media had reported on cases of Bird Flu, but failed to say anything about the recent Foot-and-Mouth outbreaks…
Today the Taipei Times has a report that Chinese authorities have locked down access to villages outside of Beijing to halt the spread of Foot-and-Mouth disease…
Apparently the Chinese government didn’t learn a damn thing from SARS, because they still insist on being ignorant rather than warning the public when serious health issues pose a risk to the people.
When will losing "face" to take a backseat to losing lives in China?

Horse’s Mouth may actually be too kind on the CPC. If this report from the Google News-approved Recombinomics is to be believed, China’s media isn’t reporting on the avian flu either:

The report above would seem
to indicate a news blackout of some sort was in place for Qinghai
province.  The sequence of events is cause for significant
concern.  Initial reports
of dead geese at the Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve indicated that 178 bar
headed geese had died, but not of bird flu.  Recent media reports
indicated that the dead geese were H5N1 positive and the OIE report of
May 21 indicated there were 519
dead waterfowl involving five species, including the bar-headed geese.
Official comments from China
indicated the 519 deaths were isolated and there were no deaths in farm
birds or people.  Promed then carried a report
indicating 6 people had died and the Chinese language report
indicated they were tourists and the names and point of origin of 4
fatalities were given.