A Political
Test
China's
Public Health Crisis Becomes a Crisis of Faith
The
Covid-19 epidemic poses political risks for China's leadership. It's now on
President Xi Jinping to deliver security and prosperity while trying to solve a
serious public health crisis. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with the government's
handling of the situation is growing online.
By Georg
Fahrion
18.02.2020,
14:03 Uhr
Chen Quishi
is no longer posting online. In late January, he snuck into Wuhan -- the
epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak -- with a backpack, a sleeping bag and a
smartphone. It was the day after authorities had sealed off the city. The
34-year-old Chen, a lawyer, has made a name for himself as a blogger. In Wuhan,
he saw hopelessly overcrowded hospitals, used face masks littering the streets
and vomit in front of a clinic; he watched as a nurse who had been infected
broke down screaming in panic. The clips he shared online showed a city in a
state of emergency.
"I'm
afraid," Chen said in one of his videos. "In front of me is the
disease, behind me is China's legal and administrative power. But as long as
I'm alive, I'll speak what I've seen and what I've heard." He added:
"Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?"
Almost two
weeks ago, Chen disappeared. Friends of his say the authorities put him under
"quarantine," where he's apparently not allowed to use a phone, and
his whereabouts are unclear. Before his disappearance, the police had urged
Chen's parents to stop their son from "spreading negative comments about
the government." The blogger was obviously shedding light on things the
government would have preferred to keep in the dark. Xi Jinping, the Chinese
president and general secretary of the country's all-powerful Communist Party,
has declared a "people's war" against the disease, which, since last
week, is being called Covid-19. In such a war, a blogger operating as a free
agent could pose a threat.
China is
currently waging battles on three fronts: On one of them, there are doctors,
nurses, scientists and civil servants fighting for public health -- not to
mention hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens who are trying to avoid
contact with others, washing their hands constantly and wearing protective
masks when they leave the house.
On the
second front, the battle for the economy has only just begun, after the
extended New Year's holiday came to an end last Monday. It will be fought in
the coming weeks and months by companies, employees, bankers and policymakers.
The battle
on the third front is, by contrast, well underway and is unfolding online. And
in that fight, no less than the legitimacy of China's rulers is at stake. After
all, it is the Communist Party that is responsible for citizens' well-being.
Should it give the impression that it's failing in that duty, one pillar of its
power begins to crumble. The virus, in other words, is also a grave political
threat.
An
'Existential Crisis'
Many cities
have now been sealed off, with public life in Beijing and other metropolises
having ground to a halt. According to the World Health Organization, as of
Sunday, Feb. 16, there had been 51,174 laboratory-confirmed infections and
1,666 deaths in China alone. There is little doubt that party cadres, with
their cover-ups and delaying tactics in the early days of the epidemic, bear
some responsibility for the fact that the virus was able to spread throughout
the entire country.
Had
officials in Hubei province not attempted to suppress warnings about the virus
for so long, SARS-CoV-2 may have been contained sooner and more efficiently.
Since the outbreak began, high-ranking public and Communist Party officials
have had to vacate their posts, including the party leader of Hubei province
with its 58 million inhabitants.
An added
complication for the Communist Party is the fact that this is the first major
catastrophe that Beijing has had to face in real time in the age of social
media -- and the displeasure expressed by millions of Chinese online has been
significant. For one, users have criticized the fact that Xi, the party leader,
was absent for so long as the crisis unfolded, instead sending his prime
minister, Li Keqiang, into the spotlight. From late January to the middle of February,
there were hardly any new photos of Xi. "Where is this person?"
people asked on the Chinese internet, until the censors understood and blocked
such messages.
Bill
Bishop, the author of a newsletter about China widely read by experts, even
went so far as to write that the Communist Party had not come as close to an
"existential crisis" since the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen
Square.
The uproar
online may have factored into Xi's decision to now take charge of the situation
publicly. Last Monday, he visited a hospital in Beijing, where he had a nurse
take his temperature and spoke words of encouragement to doctors and other
health workers. This gave state media cause for celebration: Xi's visit was
"boosting the faith in national strength and an unconquerable will to
win," wrote the party's official Xinhua news agency.
A Temporary
Reprieve
The regime
now has to strike a delicate balance. On the one hand, it must be transparent
as it deals with the spread of the virus, including keeping the international
community informed. On the other hand, it must do what it can to prevent
frustration expressed online from turning into lasting, fundamental resentment.
Since early
December, the debate over the virus has gone through several stages. "In
the first phase, there was a deliberate attempt to suppress any expression
about the possibility of an epidemic," says Victor Gao, vice president of
the Center for China and Globalization, an influential think tank in Beijing.
Gao was an English interpreter for the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, so
he's not exactly one of the regime's most outspoken critics. "There was a
deliberate exercise of censorship by various levels of government, starting in
Wuhan and Hubei. In some instances, there were vested interests behind it --
for example, they didn't want the city to look like it was in panic or become
the target of a lot of criticism and condemnation."
One victim
of this cover-up was Li Wenliang, the now world-famous doctor from Wuhan who
warned colleagues about the emergence of a new SARS-like virus at the end of
December. He did so in a closed group chat, and Li asked his co-workers to be
discreet. But that didn't help him when his message was leaked to the outside
world. He was summoned by one authority after another, first by the local
health commission, then a Communist Party cell at his hospital and finally by
the police. There would be consequences, he was told, if he continued to
"spread rumors." When the authorities finally informed the public
about the new coronavirus, they initially played down the danger it posed.
It wasn't
until the epidemiologist Zhong Nan-shan announced on Jan. 20 that the pathogen
could be transmitted between humans that the spectrum of what was permissible
to say widened, if only for a short time. Journalists were dispatched to the
region and they didn't shy away from sharing even the most sensitive reports.
That was when the Beijing Youth Daily interviewed Li, who by that time had
fallen ill himself. The magazine Caixin quoted a leading Hong Kong researcher
who said the epidemic could cause 10 times as much damage as the SARS pathogen
from 2003. No fewer than 37 journalists formed the team behind a four-part
series published by Caixin outlining the failure of the Wuhan authorities in
granular detail.
Square
Dancing, Tai Chi and Hearty Meals
Censorship
was also temporarily loosened on social media. Phone videos showed crying
nurses, crowded emergency rooms and body bags. Why the censors allowed so many
critical posts to stay online is anybody's guess. Perhaps they wanted to give
citizens an outlet to vent their frustrations. Or maybe it was because those
frustrations were primarily directed at local party cadres and not at Beijing.
But ever
since the authorities closed down Wuhan and the central government took over as
crisis manager at the end of January, the long-established rules for public
discourse have been restored. Criticism of the government is blocked and
censorship has picked up again. Xi Jinping, for his part, issued a directive to
strengthen "public opinion guidance." The party's propaganda
department also sent 300 employees "to the front in Hubei and Wuhan"
to tell uplifting stories from the epicenter of the outbreak.
The Xinhua
news agency, for instance, filmed "optimistic patients" swaying
together to music as they stood next to their hospital beds. The government
affiliated Global Times quoted infected people in Wuhan saying they felt
"at home" in their makeshift clinic thanks to "square dancing,
tai chi and hearty meals."
The
question of who is to blame for the outbreak has already been decided. "At
the center, there's always this proclivity: Beijing good and smart, the
provinces crooked and dumb," says Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the
Lowy Institute in Sydney. The badly hit city of Huanggang, for instance,
punished several hundred officials for alleged mismanagement. Party comrades
from Zhejiang province faced a similar fate.
The mayor
of Wuhan, on the other hand, is still in office. He pointed out that his hands
had been tied due to a law preventing provincial leaders from declaring an
outbreak without express permission from Beijing. McGregor says the mayor has a
point: "The idea that this is all Wuhan's fault -- I can't see that."
The System
Prevails
In that
light, it is significant how the government in Beijing has dealt with the grief
and anger that appeared online after the doctor Li Wenliang died. After he
become infected with Covid-19, his fight for life had turned into a drama. At
first, though, it was unclear whether Li had died at all. The Global Times was
the only medium to report his death, but it quickly took down the story. In the
end, many Chinese felt deceived.
Hashtags
demanding freedom of speech received millions of clicks. On Weibo and WeChat,
popular Chinese social media and messaging services, images of burning candles
were everywhere. So too was a caricature of Li with a face mask made of barbed
wire. Professors and lawyers drew up two petitions demanding freedom of the
press.
The
Communist Party's response has been to declare the late doctor a hero. The
authorities also announced they would send a team of investigators to Wuhan.
The message from headquarters was this: Wuhan's local leaders may have done Li
a disservice, but Beijing stands by him.
Even
critics of the central government don't believe the stability of the system is
yet in danger, though the coming weeks will likely be decisive. At the end of
the holidays, millions of migrant workers returned to their factories and
offices, while life in China's cities is returning to normal. People are
getting back in touch with each other.
The
National People's Congress is scheduled to convene in Beijing in early March
for one of the most important dates on the Chinese political calendar. If it
were to be cancelled, it would severely harm confidence in leaders' ability to
manage the crisis.
One man who
signed one of the petitions for freedom of expression says he thinks a turning
point has been reached in Chinese history. "This is the first time in 20
years that I've seen so many people in China express negative feelings toward
the Communist Party," says Wu Qiang, a former lecturer in politics at
Beijing's renowned Tsinghua University. It may take a while, but "personally,
I think this is the starting point of a revolution in China," he says.
So far,
however, most people don't share Wu's assessment. He lost his job at the
university because he wanted to teach his students about social movements. And
because he spoke to foreign media too much. The party wasn't fond of either. As
it so often does, the system prevailed.
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