Previous NextTo see this, it’s worth reviewing how they handled the crisis. Upon hearing that a new coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan in the Hubei province, local authorities’ first instinct, as we know, was to suppress the information.

Police whistleblowers like the Wuhan-based doctor Li Wenliang, who subsequently died of the disease. (Wuhan police recently to Li’s family.)This should have motivated Chinese leaders to weigh the costs of censorship and reconsider the appointment of unqualified party members to key public-health positions. The head of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, dismissed during the crisis, had in the public-health sector.Moreover, some other countries, especially Singapore and Taiwan, managed to contain the COVID-19 outbreak without incurring the high costs that China did when it at least 760 million Chinese under varying degrees of residential lockdown. China’s leaders should be looking to these countries for lessons on smarter crisis response.But, far from learning from past mistakes, China’s leaders are trying to cover them up. As virtually the entire global economy effectively shuts down to contain the China-born virus, and in Italy – the pandemic’s new epicenter – exceed 7,500, the Communist Party of China has shifted its propaganda machine into high gear.

Its goal: change the narrative of the COVID-19 crisis.At home, this has meant touting the CPC’s leadership in mobilizing the country to “win the war” against the virus. It has also meant encouraging the spread on Chinese social media of exaggerated or outright false stories about Western democracies’ “inept” responses to the outbreak. Project Syndicate is conducting a short reader survey. As a valued reader, your feedback is greatly appreciated.Take SurveyAbroad, China’s propaganda machine is trumpeting declining infection rates as evidence that strong centralized leadership is more effective than democratic governance.

As the COVID-19 pandemic escalates, China has shifted its propaganda machine into high gear, in an effort to change the narrative about the.

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Meanwhile, the government is sending humanitarian assistance – including health-care workers and medical supplies – to hard-hit countries like Iran, Italy, and the Philippines.But if Chinese leaders hope to use the COVID-19 pandemic to build and project soft power, they are likely to be sorely disappointed. For starters, the world is nowhere near ready to forget the role that its initial cover-up played in allowing the virus to spread.The prevailing view outside China today is that, had the country’s leaders taken decisive action immediately and transparently, the current pandemic may have been avoided. The CPC can challenge that narrative all it wants, but it cannot force international media to do the same. Chinese propaganda has never gotten much purchase in the free marketplace of ideas; indeed, most of the CPC’s previous attempts to influence international public opinion have fallen flat.Moreover, few are tempted by a Chinese-style containment strategy.

Shutting down the entire country has cost China dearly in economic terms. First-quarter GDP is to plunge 9%. Should a second wave of infections strike, as is likely, repeating the same strategy would lead to economic ruin.Of course, if this were the only way to save lives, people might be on board. But Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan all seem to have struck a better balance between protecting public health and sustaining economic activity.Against this background, China’s humanitarian efforts will do little to repair its reputation. Yes, it is better than offering no help at all. But the country could do a lot more to bolster public health globally – beginning with sharing the massive amounts of data and knowledge it has gathered on the virus.China could also scale up the production of protective equipment, especially hazmat suits and surgical masks.

China made before the COVID-19 outbreak, and it has since expanded production nearly 12-fold. If it really does have the virus under control, there is nothing stopping it from donating this life-saving equipment to hard-hit countries, which are facing severe shortages.In particular, China should make a major donation – say, one billion surgical masks and one million hazmat suits (ten days of supply for 50,000 health-care workers) – to the United States. This could ease tensions between the two countries just enough to enable them – together with the European Union and Japan – to pursue a coordinated response to the pandemic, including action to shore up the global financial system and major stimulus packages to stave off a depression.When this pandemic is finally over, people will remember what China did, not what it said. It can go down in history either as the reason the COVID-19 crisis began, or as one of the reasons it ended.

Show paragraphIt is good when countries act of good conscience and that is always to be encouraged. But if China were acting out of self interest it would be naive to expect meaningful gratitude from the likes of Mr Trump who has quite unfairly castigated General Motors efforts to help in the crisis, perhaps only because he has a personal aversion to the highly competent CEO Mary Barra. So if self interest is the game, then publicity back at home is the only likely gain, unless it is money too.Reply. Minxin Pei says when the pandemic is “finally over,” people across the globe should not forget the deadly cover-up, which took place within the Communist Party of China (CPC) on COVID-19. The virus was identified as having highly infectious qualities in November, when some 260 people contracted it and came under medical surveillance. Instead of alerting the world of the novel virus, there was a crackdown on information about it in Wuhan.

Health authorities issued orders to suppress the news, allowing the virus to spread across the country and beyond. Since its outbreak, countries all over the world struggle to fight an invisible enemy. Meanwhile, China has declared victory over the virus, and since then positioned itself as a global benefactor in public health, shifting its “propaganda machine into high gear,” hopping to change the narrative” of the crisis of its own making, and “encouraging the spread on Chinese social media of exaggerated or outright false stories about Western democracies’ “inept responses” to the pandemic. However, the international community will “remember what China did, not what it said.” The author points out the high price Beijing had to pay “when it placed at least 760 million Chinese under varying degrees of residential lockdown.” So far few countries are eager to replicate this containment strategy, given the risk of an economic meltdown. Such a scenario would pose a threat to the Communist Party’s legitimacy, which rules on the promise of economic prosperity. “First-quarter GDP is expected to plunge 9%.

Widespread screening is essential in order to contain this virus, because there are asymptomatic carriers that can spread the disease. It took time to identify the virus, sequence its genome and design a test. Then, they must mass produce millions of test kits, make sure they work (note the CDC debacle) and distribute them to where they are needed. It took 3 weeks to accomplish all that, which is record time, but this epidemic can double every 2 to 3 days without drastic social distancing measures Therefore, it was necessary for China to impose these draconian measures. Other countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea had the luxury of the extra weeks afforded them by the Chinese quarantines, allowing them to implement widespread screening of travellers and targeted isolation of suspected cases.

When there is a second wave from imported cases in China, they will be ready with targeted quarantines and screening measures, and hopefully such draconian social distancing measures would not be necessary.Reply. Apr 2, 2020. Adrian, all true. But I think what infuriates non Chinese the most even beyond their having kept open “wet markets” even after SARS, is the blatant lying that the PRC has engaged in. Example, From the very first, they treated whistleblowing doctors in November and December as enemies of the state despite the PRC’s very poor past SARS performance and then having signed treaties requiring openness In pandemics.

In that context repeatedly telling the WHO And the world that there was no evidence of human to human transmission.while stiff arming WHO (for weeks)and US CDC scientists (never let them in at all) from being able to verify personally.or in fact.easily disprove that claim is close to being criminal.given their lie about no human to human transmission. No wonder the rest of the world did not take this nearly as seriously as they should have.

Had the rest of the world known of this millions of people all over the world would not be likely condemned to die. One estimate, by scientists in Britain, including distinguished Chinese doctors estimated that this failure accounts for 95% of the likely deaths in the world. Finally, the blatant attempt to divert responsibility by now claiming that an American serviceman was responsible is the lowest of totally cynical propaganda. No one outside of the PRC believes that so it can be seen as a very cynical attempt by Xi personally to avoid China’s responsibility to his own population.

Similarly veiled threats to withhold medicines and in the words of one of their official papers, “let the US sink in a sea of Corona virus” if they continue to call it the Wuhan flu” or “the Chinese virus“ is incredibly tone death, especially when their own papers for months called it the Wuhan flu”.and they had already started the false flag operation re the US serviceman. So yes, the world will get over this, and thePRC’sdraconian methods to enforce a shut down appear to have worked, at least temporarily, even if this is not really possible in most more democratic countries, but I suspect in the end this entire crisis will lead to even more urgent efforts of other countries to become far more independent of the PRC in many different dimensions.Reply. Apr 3, 2020. I would like to take your points one by one. I agree that there are many issues that need addressing, and public hygiene is one. Wet markets have been a feature of Chinese culture forever, because of the importance of fresh meat and seafood in Chinese cuisine.

And I am dead against the killing of wildlife, and in fact against the whole meat industry in general. But scientists now agrees that SARS-CoV2 made the jump to humans long ago, probably decades, and the final mutations that conferred its deadly characteristics occurred in humans. The closest animal coronavirus they could find still had the crucial mutations of the spike protein missing, leading to their conclusion. Second point: 'while stiff arming WHO (for weeks)and US CDC scientists (never let them in at all) from being able to verify personally. Again untrue.

The CDC has an outpost collaborating with the Chinese CDC, and it was the Trump administration who pulled the personel out. Even then, there were 14 CDC scientists in Beijing when the epidemic broke out. After this was reported by Reuters (even Pompeo immediately stopped making the accusations. 'From the very first, they treated whistleblowing doctors in November and December as enemies of the state' This is of course despicable. Unfortunately, healthcare workers in the US are also being punished for speaking out. Doctors and nurses are fired from their jobs for exposing inadequacies of their work environment.

So this seems to be a universal problem. 'One estimate, by scientists in Britain, including distinguished Chinese doctors estimated that this failure accounts for 95% of the likely deaths in the world.' I love these theoretical scenarios, such as 'if nothing is done, 2.2 million people will die, or is it 220,000?' Nobody knows how many people were infected by the time doctors in Wuhan noticed unusual numbers of pneumonia cases, but it is becoming clearer that the epidemic had already started at least 2 to 3 months by then.

So what could have been done to prevent 95% of the deaths by that time? They did not know what they were dealing with, and there was no test for it.

We are trying to apply what we know now to criticise what they should have done back at the beginning. The US, the most advanced country in terms of medical sciences, and the wealthiest nation on earth, had a 2 month head start to prepare for the epidemic.

Did they manage to stop the spread on US soil? The nature of this infection is such that it is probably impossible to avoid a pandemic with high mortality until there is a vaccine. Just because it was first found in China does not mean they should have controlled it. If it had started in the US, the outcome would have been the same. 'given their lie about no human to human transmission.' I don't know how much they knew when they said this, but generally, any official statements must be backed by evidence, so I don't know whether this was a lie or if they were just being cautious.

The tendency for people in the West is to see everything the Chinese government does as a sign of evilness or at least malfeasance, whereas the same actions by Western leaders are excused as incompetence or political posturing. This is the success of Western propaganda.Reply.