中国严防埃博拉进入本土

Charles Abior and his family have been doing business in China for more than 40 years, but this debonair Nigerian says he was denied entry to the recent Canton trade fair owing to fears that he was an Ebola carrier.

查尔斯•艾比奥(Charles Abior)和他的家人在中国做了40多年生意。然而，这名乐观自信的尼日利亚人表示，由于担心他是埃博拉病毒携带者，最近举办的广交会不让他入内。

Now police call his hotel regularly and government doctors show up to take his temperature every few days. “I keep telling them, Nigeria is Ebola free,” says the businessman, who buys cosmetics in China and sells them in Nigeria.

中国警方会定期给他所在的酒店打电话，政府派出的医生每过几天就会来给他量体温。这位商人表示：“我一直在告诉他们，尼日利亚没有出现埃博拉疫情。”艾比奥在中国采购化妆品，然后在尼日利亚销售。

Africans around the world – even those from countries far removed from the west African nations most affected by the virus – are feeling the brunt of public panic from locals who fear they may catch the dreaded virus from them.

全球各地的非洲人都感受到了民众的恐慌，当地人担心会被他们传染上可怕的埃博拉病毒。即使他们来自的国家与埃博拉疫情最严重的西非国家远隔千山万水，也能感受到这种冲击。

China, with its 1.4bn population and overcrowded cities, has had no confirmed cases of Ebola, and controls on the media appear to have kept the level of public concern relatively low. Beijing will do whatever it takes to keep Ebola out of China, including effectively banning some Africans from the recent Canton fair and enlisting hotels to help monitor others. After being turned away from the fair, Mr Abior travelled to Yiwu, the vast international market town in eastern China where African traders come in their thousands to buy everything from rubber gloves to hairbands, from bedsheets to women’s underwear, from 200,000 vendors. Yiwu is on the frontline of Beijing’s efforts to keep Ebola out of China, along with Guangzhou, host of the Canton fair.

中国有14亿人口，而且城市人口极为密集。目前，中国并未确诊埃博拉病例，政府似乎也已通过对媒体的监控，将公众的担忧保持在相对较低的水平上。为了把埃博拉病毒封堵在中国之外，中国政府会采取一切可能措施，包括从实质上禁止部分非洲人参加近期的广交会，以及要求酒店帮助监控其他非洲人。在被广交会拒之门外后，艾比奥来到了义乌。义乌是华东一个规模巨大的国际化集镇，数以千计的非洲商人来到这里，从20万摊贩手中购买从橡胶手套到束发带、从床单到女式内衣在内的各种东西。和主办广交会的广州市一样，义乌也是中国政府将埃博拉病毒封堵在中国境外的前沿阵地。

Lin Songtian, head of the Africa bureau at the foreign ministry, said: “China has instituted strict controls at airports and customs entry ports, in line with worldwide practice.”

中国外交部非洲司司长林松添表示：“我们按照国际社会通行做法，在机场、海关等边境口岸采取诸如检测体温、填写登记表、预留联系电话等措施，但没有禁止非洲公民来华旅游、经商和开展合作。”

But it is a balancing act: Beijing needs to protect the local population without offending Africa, at a time when its trade and investment ties with the continent are increasingly crucial to its foreign policy. Beijing insists it has not formally restricted entry to China by the three countries most affected by Ebola: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

不过，中国政府这么做需要权衡两方面的因素。一方面，他们需要保护本国民众。另一方面，与非洲的贸易和投资联系在中国外交政策中日趋重要，中国必须确保相关措施不会冒犯非洲。中国政府坚称，对于几内亚、塞拉利昂和利比里亚这三个埃博拉疫情最严重的国家，中国并未正式限制人们从这三国进入中国。

Canton fair officials say the local government told them to reject visitors from those three countries as well as Congo – even though China’s foreign and health ministries do not consider Congo to have an Ebola epidemic. Gao Fu, vice-director of the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, says if the epidemic in Africa continues, it is “just a matter of time” before China sees its first Ebola case. “But I don’t think there will be an extensive outbreak in China, since China has set up a very good infectious disease control and prevention system on the basis of lessons we learnt during the Sars [outbreak]” about a decade ago, he says.

广交会的有关官员表示，当地政府已要求他们拒绝来自以上三国及刚果的访客——尽管中国外交部和卫生部并不认为刚果出现了埃博拉疫情。中国疾病预防控制中心(China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention)副主任高福表示，只要非洲疫情继续扩散，中国出现首例埃博拉感染者就“只是个时间问题”。不过他还表示：“自从（大约十年前）SARS爆发以后，我们国家建立起了公共卫生防控体系、全国的联防联控机制，再加上各个地区的疾病预防控制的基础设施，大规模爆发的可能性是没有的。”

In Yiwu, Jason Ding, manager of the Longteng Hotel, is part of that system. “Currently, we mainly target countries that have a serious Ebola epidemic  . . . We take the temperature of the guests from [those] countries when they check in and also in the morning and afternoon,” he says. “We disinfect everything in the lift that can be touched by human hands,” along with television remote controls, chair arms, telephones and tables, he says.

在义乌，龙腾宾馆的丁经理是这一联防联控机制的一部分。他说：“目前，我们主要关注的是埃博拉疫情严重的国家……我们会在（相关）各国旅客入住时为他们测量体温，并在每天早晚各量一次体温。”他还表示，电视机遥控器、沙发扶手、电话和桌面以及“电梯中所有人手可能接触的部位都会采取消毒措施。”

“When the guest checks out, we infrared sterilise the tea cups,” he adds. But most of Mr Ding’s current guests are Nigerians who arrived after the country was declared Ebola free, “So our job is almost finished. Most Africans in Yiwu are Nigerians or Ugandans” with few from Ebola zone countries, he says.

他还补充说：“客人离店后，我们还会对茶杯采取红外杀菌措施。”不过，在丁经理目前的客人中，多数都是尼日利亚人，他们都是在尼日利亚被宣告不存在埃博拉疫情之后来到义乌的。他说，“所以我们的工作已基本结束。义乌多数非洲人都是尼日利亚人或乌干达人”，很少来自埃博拉疫区国家的人。

Zhang Zhengbing, an Yiwu taxi driver, says “so long as I don’t shake hands with them it should be OK”, echoing government advice to restrict hugging and handshaking. But Mr Abior says that does not bother him, adding that he does not feel any fear or ostracisation from the local population. “Most Chinese don’t do much handshaking anyway,” he says. “How often do they hug you normally?” he asks with a grin.

义乌出租车司机张正兵表示，“只要我不跟他们握手就应该没事”，这话与中国政府关于尽量不要拥抱和握手的建议完全一致。不过，艾比奥表示这并未对他造成困扰，并称他没有感到当地人的恐慌和排斥。他说：“反正多数中国人都很少握手。”他还咧嘴笑着问道：“你说他们一般会多久拥抱你一次？”