China's Heavyhanded Tactics and Inability to Control Coronavirus Attracting Growing Criticism

The public has been angry for weeks that Wuhan officials downplayed the coronavirus and silenced whistle-blowers like Li Wenliang.

But the central authorities were largely able to keep this anger focused on local officials by allowing a rare amount of transparency and giving Chinese media a relatively free hand.  In the past week or so, however, the central authorities have tightened their grip on the flow of information, with state media emphasizing positive stories of resilience and heroism.

The death of Li Wenliang might have fit into this new narrative of heroism.  But his death has instead exposed the cold reality at the heart of the Chinese social contract: when it comes down to it, individuals are absolutely expendable if the stability of the Party is at stake.

Li resonated with the public because he wasn't a Party cadre or police officer -- he was an ordinary person who loved ice cream and TV. He's infinitely more sympathetic than the steely-eyed men and women trying to control the narrative around his death.

The need to maintain stability is what will dominate the response to Li's death.  An outpouring of grief is fine, even some anger is acceptable, provided it can be focused on individuals and not the system at large, and some scalps may be offered to help this along.  What the authorities cannot allow is for the Party or the central government to become a target-- but that is looking ever more unlikely. 

A total of 86 people in mainland China died from the virus yesterday, which was the highest single-day death toll since the Chinese authorities began issuing daily updates.  That means the number of deaths per day in mainland China has steadily risen over the past few weeks. And the central government continues to refuse assistance from leading contagious disease experts within the United States.  To make matters worse, the central government is now threatening anyone who disrupts the government's efforts to control the epidemic with the the death penalty.

Driving yet more suspicion against the Chinese governments are reports that they are kidnapping and silencing critics of the government response to the virus.  Lawyer and self-styled journalist Chen Qiushi had been posting videos from Wuhan since January 24, the day after the city was put under a lock down. His dispatches offered a critical take on conditions in the city, including the state of hospitals as well as newly constructed isolation wards.  Chen’s videos and personal accounts have been censored from Chinese social media sites, but he continued to post on Twitter and YouTube, where his most watched videos were regularly seen by more than a million people.

His friends told western journalists they had been checking in with him multiple times a day, fearing he could be taken by the authorities at any time for his reporting. When he stopped answering calls on Thursday evening, they grew increasingly concerned.  Yesterday, Chen’s mother posted a video message on his Twitter page saying her son had disappeared.  It is said that he has been forcibly quarantined for his own good, but given the reputation of the central government, this is widely believed to be just a pretext to keep his reporting under wraps.