China’s coronavirus crisis and the cult of censorship

China’s censorship 

China continues to seek to downplay the outbreak, which is fast becoming an epidemic. Voices that criticized the government’s handling of the 2003 SARS-CoV outbreak are mostly gone, now, targeted because of their integrity. New voices that criticize the government for its lack of action on 2019-nCoV are daily scrubbed from China’s social media. 

Between Dec. 30 and Jan. 4, social media posts about the outbreak on China’s WeChat spiked, plummeting thereafter according to one analysis. Only on Jan. 20, when the government slowed its censorship efforts, did mentions of the outbreak explode.

A local investigative reporter from Caixin Media was beaten by four security guards while researching the seafood and wildlife wet market where the outbreak allegedly began. Another reporter from the same outlet was forbidden to speak with doctors to confirm infections of medical personnel. CCDC had issued an order forbidding medical personnel from speaking to the media. 

A group of Hong Kong reporters was detained at Wuhan’s hospital. They had to delete their footage and got their phones and cameras inspected by officials. An article written for qq.com, owned by China’s Tencent, was deleted after only ten hours online. A whistle-blower on the SARS epidemic was denied an exit visa to visit the United States, where he was to receive a human rights award.

On Jan. 28, Wuhan’s Mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted publicly on state media CCTV to not acting quickly enough. He said that “not only had we not revealed the information [of the coronavirus outbreak in the city] in a timely manner, but we had not used much effective information to improve our work.” But he at least partially blamed the lack of transparency on Beijing’s control over information releases related to infectious disease. He said: “Because it is an infectious disease, and we have the infectious disease prevention law to regulate the information disclosure, as a local government, after we have the information, we can only reveal it after approval.”

Only after 40 days of allowing the outbreak to spread did Xi Jinping finally issue instructions on how to take action. Apparently, that is what was needed for China’s bureaucracy to respond to the ongoing threat. China’s autocratic decision-making was a bottle neck that delayed effective action on this critical threat.

China’s reaction to coronavirus can therefore be plausibly called a cover-up that continues today. “In fact, if we look at the main efforts undertaken by the leadership, and by provincial and city governments in particular,” Da Shiji writes, “these were focused mostly not on the containment of the epidemic itself, but on the containment and suppression of information about the disease.” 

Waking up to the problem: Xi Jinping and the CCP

People in China are, by Da Shiji’s account, highly critical of the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, and in particular of the government’s secrecy. He writes, “many people view this failure to grapple openly with the outbreak as the chief reason why it was later seen as necessary to take the ‘dramatic action’ of closing down my city and many others.” 

One government journalist bravely called for the replacement of Wuhan’s commanders, which went viral but was then expunged. He faced disciplinary proceedings. Then according to Da Shiji, the “word ‘coronavirus’, or guānzhuàng bìngdú (冠状病毒), was replaced with the identical-sounding ‘official virus’ (官状病毒), mocking the cowardice and ineffectiveness of the government and of high-level officials.” 

China’s coverup of coronavirus is being lambasted in the global press. On Jan. 22, The New York Times published an article that detailed China’s extensive attempts to control the public narrative on coronavirus. It ended with a quote from a former Chinese reporter: “It’s not public disclosure,” he said. “It’s a naked information monopoly.” 

On Jan. 26, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece titled: “China’s Censorship Helps Spread the Virus.” Paul Wolfowitz, former president of the World Bank, wrote that if the coronavirus “develops into a catastrophe, the cult of personality around Mr. Xi and the communist regime’s efforts to control information will deserve much of the blame.” He compares Xi’s secrecy to that surrounding the Spanish Flu of 1918-19, when wartime exigencies required countries to downplay the threat to maintain morale. Fifty million people died. “The lesson of 1918 is that secrecy can kill,” he wrote. “Chinese communism now threatens the world with a massive medical disaster.”

The Washington Post’s editorial board cited Da Shiji’s article on Jan. 29. “A free press might have made a difference — it might have at least raised questions about people’s illnesses,” the editors wrote. “But such a press does not exist in China.” 

The same day, Nicholas Kristof and Minxen Pei wrote opinion pieces in a similar vein.

Pei commented in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post that the CCP’s “pathological secrecy hobbles the authorities’ capacity to respond quickly to epidemics.” The CCP’s survival, paramount for China’s leaders, depends on a lack of transparency, media freedom and civil liberties, he wrote. “So, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping demands that the government increase its capacity to handle ‘major risks’, China will continue to undermine its own — and the world’s — safety, to bolster the Communist Party’s authority.”

Kristof lead in The New York Times by targeting Xi Jinping himself: “Xi used his tight rule to control information rather than to stop an epidemic.” Xi is a “preening dictator,” wrote Kristof, and he should be in “political trouble for his misrule.”

Quarantine China

Countries around the world might be able to help Xi experience enough “political trouble” to get him removed. We can put economic sanctions on China. We can increase tariffs. We can cut travel to and from China. 

The last option is relatively new and makes sense for more than one reason in light of the fast-spreading coronavirus. Many airlines and neighboring regions are already doing it. British Airways, American Airlines, United, Air Canada, Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific, for example, have cancelled flights. 

During the 2003 SARS-CoV outbreak, Asian flights decreased by 45 percent, so we can expect more such cancellations. But we should do more than just let the market decide how much to limit flights. Our health and livelihood are more than a market issue. Greater border restrictions on Chinese nationals, and restrictions on our own nationals visiting China, would immediately decrease coronavirus vectors from China to the rest of the world. It would in effect be a global China quarantine.

Such a quarantine is already happening. Russia closed its land border with China on Jan. 30. Papua New Guinea is refusing entry from “any Asian ports.” Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau have limited travel more generally to and from China. The rest of the world can and should take their lead from these China-smart countries and regions, and do the same. 

Such travel restrictions need not be permanent. A generalized China quarantine could in future be lifted as China takes irreversible steps towards fixing the problems that allowed coronavirus to reach epidemic proportions in the first place, including centralized power, and lack of freedom of speech and the press.

Whether or not this becomes a pandemic, there will be future epidemics, and they are likely as not to originate in China. China did not learn the lesson of SARS and fully rectify its outbreak procedures and policies, and there is no guarantee that the country will correct itself next time around. 

Part of the problem, as should be clear from China’s slow, opaque, noncooperative and discombobulated response to coronavirus, is that the CCP is so jealous of its political control that it cannot take common-sense measures like allowing the publication of early warnings at the local level. It cannot allow Taiwan, a democratic, independent and sovereign nation, to evacuate its nationals or participate in the World Health Organization, because China’s quest for ever greater power does not allow it to recognize Taiwan as independent. China’s dictatorial leadership, yes-men surrounding Xi and obsession for control are part of the problem that allows outbreaks in China to get out of control. 

Given the highly interrelated nature of today’s globalized populations, viruses that threaten China, threaten the world. So, China’s inefficient autocracy suddenly is being recognized not just as a Chinese problem. It’s a global problem.  

This means that to improve humanity’s resilience and proactive measures against future pandemics, we should all work for a democratic China that will perforce enjoy the greater openness that stops outbreaks from becoming epidemics, and epidemics from becoming pandemics. We should all work for a democratic China in which the free speech that encourages the kind of openness we need to fight pandemics becomes the norm. 

Xi’s strategy will be to wait out the epidemic and hope the news cycle focuses elsewhere. After this epidemic goes away, Xi hopes his near-totalitarian rule will remain. But until that changes, the next outbreak in China will again risk becoming a pandemic.  

Let’s be smarter than our reaction to SARS-CoV in 2003. Let’s not be too quick to reopen flights with China until it cures itself not only in terms of health, but in terms of politics. A healthy body politic of democratic transparency is just as necessary for a healthy population as other public health best practices.  The CCP should start making progress towards democracy, human rights, and free speech before we restart our economic engagement and nonstop flights. We owe that to the people of China, and we owe that to global public health.

Anders Corr holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and has worked for U.S. military intelligence as a civilian, including on China and Central Asia. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of LiCAS.news

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This article was published Jan. 21, 2020.