Doctor’s silencing and death should sober Beijing and us
The death of a young Chinese doctor who was silenced by authorities when he tried to warn about the outbreak of the coronavirus has lit up the country’s social media with outrage.
By Friday, references to the death of whistleblower Li Wenliang from the virus had been viewed 270 million times on Weibo, one of the biggest social media platforms in China. The public is so angry Chinese censors haven’t yet shut the topic down.
This ophthalmologist from Wuhan, age 34, who left behind a young child and pregnant wife, has become the face of the epidemic, and of Beijing’s blunders.
Back in December, he posted his concerns about a contagious new virus that resembled SARS, the lethal coronavirus that spread to 29 countries in 2003. He was arrested, jailed and made to recant. Now he has become a martyr for millions of Chinese.
His death is also an indictment of China’s tightly controlled top-down system that silences civil society and independent media. Had his warnings been heeded in December, this outbreak might never have exploded into a global health emergency.
And Li’s bravery — along with the outrage of millions of Chinese — is a reminder that, whatever the tensions between China and the United States, the Chinese people are as much a victim of their government’s failure as the still small number who have been infected globally.
We should all mourn Li Wenliang. And so should Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing.
But of course it will not. “There is a strong parallel between the response and cover-up to SARS and this current outbreak,” I was told by the Council on Foreign Relations’ Yanzhong Huang. The first case was apparently detected on Dec. 12, but local officials hid the statistics for weeks, fearful of falling afoul of Communist Party higherups by reporting anything that undermined “stability.”
We have seen the results. Yes, Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule does well at top-down physical commands — building new hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days and quarantining the entire city. But the crackdown on nongovernmental organizations in the health field (and beyond) and muzzling of independent media cut the central government off from vitally needed information.
Says sociologist Anthony Spires, a China expert at the University of Melbourne: “Without civil society input and a freer press that could raise red flags, the government is disadvantaged in reporting outbreaks. They should know that.”
What’s so disturbing is that many Chinese officials do know that.
Will the Beijing government learn anything from the current crisis about the need for bottom-up information from civil society? It looks unlikely.
“We have declared a people’s war against the epidemic,” Xi told President Donald Trump by phone. The phrase people’s war means top-down control.
That’s a self-defeating strategy for China. It will only embolden those U.S. officials with an unrealistic view of how far America’s economy and society can be “decoupled” from China.
Beijing’s initial mishandling of the outbreak is also feeding xenophobia. Hats off to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney for visiting the city’s Chinatown and pushing back against coronavirus hysteria. Any attacks against Chinese nationals or Asian Americans, or gleeful celebration of the epidemic’s impact on China’s economy (as in Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ comment that it may bring jobs back to America), are sickening.
We should honor Li Wenliang, who reminded us that China is made up of individuals, some heroic, many seeking to make their society more transparent. The problem lies with Beijing.