It is midnight in Beijing on December 31st, 1999. Suddenly the city is plunged into darkness as the electricity grid crashes. Robbers begin breaking into upmarket stores. People try to call the police, but the Public Security Bureau is having a problem with its telephones. Radio transmission links have stopped working. Meanwhile in the Xie He hospital, doctors performing emergency surgery work on by candle-light. In the Number 1 Maternity Hospital, water has stopped coming from the taps . . .
This is the type of nightmare scenario facing officials responsible for fixing the millennium bug - or `Y2K' bug as it is called - in China in the year 2000. "I am worried about what will happen," said Gao Zhi Chao, the technology expert in Beijing's Y2K office in the city's television tower. "If electric power crashes in Beijing on January 1st and robberies begin to take place then there must be a guarantee that the Public Security Bureau can handle the situation."
The most serious problems, said his colleague, Hu Shi Xuan, may occur in hospitals, where there could be deaths among patients dependent on sophisticated medical equipment, or who are undergoing operations when the power fails. Unresolved Y2K issues in embedded chips are widespread in the health sector. The major difficulty is trying to locate the problems, much less solve them. On top of this there has been a craze in China to have a millennium baby - this is the weekend when the earth will be moving for many thousands of hopeful Chinese couples - and young mothers will be crowding into maternity hospitals nine months from now, on the one day of the century on which it is least advisable to do so.
There is a real risk power and water supplies will be affected in Beijing and other cities. Dr Chen Xinxinag of the Beijing Municipal Government admits there are "major problems" in the electrical power control systems of the nation's capital, and many Y2K problems in the computer systems of Beijing No 9 water processing plant, the main supplier to Beijing. Nationwide, the electric power network has the farthest to go in solving its Y2K problems. In Shanghai only 30 per cent of the power grid is free from the potential disaster built into microchip calendars which are programmed to recognise only the last two digits of the year, and are likely to go back a century when the year '99 clicks on to the year '00 at midnight on December 31st.
China is taking the millennium problem very seriously and has appointed a dynamic senior official, Zhang Qi, as the country's Y2K czar to minimise the problems by January 1st, 2000. But China has a unique difficulty among world countries. More than 90 per cent of the software used in the country is pirated, and this means technicians cannot call in manufacturers for help or receive software updates on tackling the problem. On top of that, "the Chinese computer system includes equipment and software from almost every hardware- and software-producing country in the world, greatly increasing China's vulnerability," said Vice Information Industry Minister Qu Weizhi.
The US embassy in Beijing has also been monitoring the situation and concluded in January that "many old computer systems, running half-forgotten programme languages and complex systems configurations, increase Chinese exposure to the year 2000 bug". In a report made available to other embassies, it said early adapters of computers in China, such as the police and the military, will have significant problems. A quarter of the country's computers are estimated to be contaminated. Shanghai television and radio were among the first organisations in China to install computerised systems. Recently they ran a test - and the system completely failed.
This US embassy report revealed an intriguing aspect of how the issue could affect the foreign community in Beijing. The "6532" telephone exchange to which all diplomats (and correspondents) are linked in the Chinese capital has a Y2K problem, it said. This exchange "has very likely the largest array of electronic monitoring equipment and the most complex routing of wire taps of any exchange in China, so embassy phone calls and faxes can be monitored," it noted, adding laconically that "tape recorders can sometimes be heard whirring in the background". It warned embassies to expect telephone problems while the Chinese Ministry of State Security sorts out the difficulties in wiretapping and telephone circuit-routing equipment. Some embassies are taking the Y2K problem in China very seriously, and a number, such as the United Kingdom, have made plans to go on evacuation status from early autumn. This is not all to do with China. Diplomats whisper darkly about potential accidents concerning missiles across the border in Russia. The Australian government is among those which have made plans to recall embassy staff from China and other countries in the region where there are perceived risks of chaos in the three months beginning from December 1st .
Chinese officials are also concerned about difficulties in the skies at the turn of the year, and have hit on a way of concentrating the mind of aviation officials. "All the heads of the airlines have got to be in the air on January 1st, 2000," said Zhao Bao of the Chinese Information Ministry. "We have to make sure there are no problems in aviation." He apparently got the idea of forcing airlines to make serious efforts to identify bugs in navigation systems and communications from the US, where Jane Garvey, head of the US Federal Aviation Administration, said she would fly across America on New Year's eve to demonstrate how safe it was.
Some world airlines such as KLM are suspending operations on January 1st lest ground facilities failing around the world, but China's 470 jetliners will be providing service as usual - with their high-ranking passengers on board, or at least those who don't develop a convenient bout of influenza. The majority of planes are made by Boeing and Airbus Industrie and the US and European companies have been working on the millennium issue in China for two years, advising and helping their Chinese clients with equipment and seminars. Everyone dismisses stories of planes falling out of the sky. Chinese airline officials have made computer bookings for 30,000 passengers well into the new year and successfully tested satellite and flight management systems. The Aviation Ministry promises the air traffic control system will be problem-free by June 30th, 1999. "I can say that on January 1st I would have the courage to take an airline flight," said Hu Shi Xuan in the Beijing Y2K office - though few officials may want to travel on the small regional airlines with little money to upgrade their ground computers.
Money is the big problem for everyone, said Gao Zhi Chao in the same office, which has been offering consulting services to companies since October. The Central Government has set the end of June as the date when all computer systems in China must pass compliance tests, but thousands of firms have not even started to review their computer systems. The health service is practically broke, and some state-owned enterprises are hard-put even to find wages for their workers. "It is really serious for those companies operating at a loss," Gao said. Some government agencies have no back-up computer systems and cannot stop their existing systems to make necessary changes. The response to a flood of Y2K articles in the Chinese computer press has been apathy from those who refuse to acknowledge there is a problem. In November a nationwide state television broadcast said one third of government units were working on Y2K, one third were starting to confront the problem, and a third were ignoring the issue completely. In many cases, technical people were very concerned about the problem but senior officials did not think it was important and refused to allocate badly needed budgets and skilled personnel. The good news is that China, as a developing country, has a lower reliance on computers in daily life. Seventy per cent of China's population is rural and more than 100 million people are not connected to the electricity grid. Most bank branches rely on manual operations rather than computers. Few people in China use credit and debit cards, which means they will avoid the type of problem encountered as early as last April by a Beijing-based diplomat who was unable to get a refund on a Mastercard purchase because of a Y2K bug in the credit card system. The banks face a particularly acute dilemma as their computer systems use equipment from 60 different manufacturers of which 80 per cent have a Y2K problem.
Some foreign companies in China are well advanced in their drive to eliminate Y2K problems. One of these is Cadbury Food Limited which makes chocolate at a big plant in Beijing. It recently presented a declaration of Y2K compliance to the Beijing electric authority in an effort to guarantee power at the millennium. The reply was that since electricity was state owned, no one could take responsibility. Cadbury has therefore procured power generators and imported an artesian water supply with secondary boilers. All senior managers have been told they must not take leave on January 1st. "At least there will be chocolate," concluded a Y2K report by the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce. Which is just as well, given the large numbers of husbands who will be visiting maternity wards early in the new year.