Righteous Rage Overcoming Fear

"The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance. The level of popular fury is volcanic, and a people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fear."
"I cannot remain silent."
"Faced with this virus, the Leader has flailed about. Although everyone looks to The One for the nod of approval, The One himself is clueless."
"Regardless of how good they are at controlling the Internet, they can't keep all 1.4 billion mouths in China shut." 
"I can now all too easily predict that I will be subjected to new punishments; indeed, this may well even be the last piece I write."
Xu Zhangrun, law professor, Beijing

People attend a vigil for Chinese doctor and whistleblower Li Wenliang, in Hong Kong, on 7 February. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

The Communist Party of China bridles with indignation that anyone should blame The Peoples Republic for the global threat to human health and longevity that is striding through one country after another, wreaking havoc, destroying public trust in their governments, laying waste to the world economy, striking down the elderly and health-compromised and instilling the terror of fearful uncertainty everywhere. This mysterious zoonotic coronavirus is most certainly a Chinese curse on the world. Indeed we live in 'interesting times'.

And thanks to an arcane, mystical Chinese alimentary and pharmacopeia heritage and custom a viral plague has been released upon humanity, identified as a global pandemic. In its great wisdom, Beijing first responded to initial reports of the mysterious pneumonia that appeared so suddenly, with denial and refusal to take serious action to stifle the emerging threat. Chinese scholars themselves appear to have predicted that it was "highly likely" there would arise coronavirus outbreaks in an article in the journal Viruses a year earlier. 

Other Chinese scientists identified the virus and sequenced its DNA once the outbreak occurred, and then posted that sequence on a virology website on January 10, mere weeks after the virus erupted to make it accessible to scientists around the world. Their rapid sequencing and worldwide release enabled researchers all over the globe to use that data to begin looking for and testing all possible potential vaccines.

The while, the CPC was busy organizing its coverup, denying that anything was amiss, threatening doctors and scientists with punishment for spreading harmful false rumours injurious to China, when they began divulging the facts on the ground to the outside world. Chinese police were ordered to crack down on eight doctors accused of alerting others within the medical community of the rising risks related to this new virus. The doctors were denounced as rumor-mongers on national media.

Disinfecting an 'open market' in China

The Chinese public was horrified and then disgusted and then infuriated when they learned that Li Wenliang, a doctor who contacted his colleagues to alert and advise them of the presence of a new viral threat, and been singled out and threatened by police, forced to recant and apologize, later contracted the novel coronavirus himself, and ultimately died of it; had his warning been heeded, countless lives might have been saved.

Now Professor Xu has called on the Chinese public to demand free speech and free elections: "Rage against injustice; let your lives burn with a flame of decency; break through stultifying darkness and welcome the dawn". These sentiments will not be thought of kindly by the Chinese regime led by President Xi Jinping -- of the man denouncing their inaction and incompetence who is now incommunicado.

The government propaganda is transparent and most Chinese understand that the coronavirus was horribly mishandled, yet another example of ineptitude on the part of the regime where Xi's government mishandled a swine fever outbreak beginning in 2018 as well, which has killed one-quarter of the world's pigs. Before that, there was SARS, yet another viral agent that leapt from animals to humans by way of infected bats and civet cats, high on the culinary banquet list.

Chinese doctors and scientists can rival the world's best. Normal life expectancy in China now stands at 82, higher than the United States. For many years, China's technocrats, doctors and scientists led a push to open a new university every week, for years. In the same token, the Communist Party of China has taken great steps in another direction, stifling social media and journalism while the cult of 'Xi' dominated.

Doctors have worked themselves unstintingly in China, improvising when medical supplies became limited and to the present over 3,300 medical workers were infected with coronavirus (which they likely would never themselves have hesitated to call Wuhanvirus) and of that number at least eight have died. Professor Xu's condemnatory essay is vibrating around China, through the surreptitious distribution of copies.

Tsinghua University Xu Zhangrun  Photo: Sohu

"The political system has collapsed under the tyranny, and a governance system [made up] of bureaucrats, which has taken [the party] more than 30 years to build has floundered", he wrote scathingly. He had written an article in 2018 criticizing Communist Party leaders for agreeing to lift the two-year term limit for presidents to allow Xi Jinping to remain in office beyond his 2023 second term. His punishment then was to be suspended from teaching at Tsinghua University. With his latest broadside targeting President Xi and the CPC, his friends feared he would be arrested and never heard from again.