Chinese media coverage of the UK cockling disaster has been remarkably open in contrast to the Sars epidemic and the death of 58 Chinese migrants in Dover four years ago.

After the drowning of 19 night-time Chinese cockle pickers in the treacherous waters of Morecambe Bay last week, reporters have been able to question the victims' families without government interference. Also, no attempts have been made by propaganda officials to hide the misery that drives thousands of Chinese to flee their homeland.

The Straits Metropolitan Daily, a small newspaper in Fuzhou where most of the victims came from, has led national and international coverage with almost daily scoops and on-the-spot interviews.

This is unheard of in China where local newspapers are discouraged from setting the agenda on important stories. Editors are usually told to follow the line given out by the national news agency or face the sack.

When 58 Chinese died in Dover four years ago, hardly anything appeared in the local media and foreign journalists who tried to interview the victims' families were detained by police.

At the time officials regarded the tragedy as a national embarrassment that needed to be hushed up. But following the Sars fiasco when China's massive cover-up backfired and led to international condemnation, the Communist leadership seems to have decided on a more open policy.

Even Xinhua, the news agency that functions as Beijing's main propaganda organ, has published material that would have been deemed damaging to the national image in the past.

The agency filed a long dispatch today that chronicled the rise of people-smuggling in China. Between 1995 and 2000, the main focus of illegal migration was apparently on Japan.

In reaction to strong measures by Tokyo the "Japan tide cooled down. Many illegal immigrants then shifted their eyes to America and Europe, especially Britain. The Britain Tide reached a peak in 2003."

The China Daily, the state newspaper for the diplomatic community, has also given extensive coverage to the disaster in Morecambe Bay. Last Saturday, most of its front page was covered with a photograph of ambulances loading Chinese victims in Lancashire.

Yesterday's front page showed a map of the route taken by migrants from China via Russia and Germany to Britain.

A sober editorial in the China Daily said: "That the British police took the initiative to co-operate with the Chinese Government is welcome. Britain has stepped up the fight against illegal immigrants after 58 Chinese would-be immigrants died of suffocation in June 2000 in a lorry in which they were being smuggled into Britain.

"China is firmly against illegal immigrants and stowaways. Unless there is a radical reframing of policy on gang labour and strengthened co-operation worldwide to fight the multi-national crime of illegal migration there will be more tragedies like Morecambe."

The new openness seen this week may be evidence that the Chinese Government has drawn valuable lessons from the Sars cover-up. The media can be a useful source of independent information for a leadership that is constantly being lied to by its own bureaucrats. This doesn't mean that cover-ups will not happen in the future but it seems that Beijing has finally realised the cost attached to them.

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