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The reports from China’s Hubei province are heartbreaking, and today’s column explores them: Doctors are working almost around the clock to stem the coronavirus outbreak, but they have limited supplies. Some are eating only one meal a day so that they will not have to go to the bathroom so often — for that would mean removing protective gear. More than 1,700 medical workers have come down with the virus in China, and at least six have died.
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But the problem is not just a virus: It is also the Communist Party’s effort to cover up the crisis when it developed. When eight doctors called attention to the virus on a private chat group, the government sent the police to punish them, and the national news media denounced them across the country. One of the doctors later died of the virus, and it is clear now that the government should have deployed resources against the virus, not against front-line doctors. Some Chinese note that if the late doctor Li Wenliang had been in charge of the country, instead of President Xi Jinping, many lives might have been saved.
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President Trump has parroted Xi’s talking points, saying the virus will soon be behind us. But a courageous Chinese law professor, Xu Zhangrun, circulated a scathing essay blaming Xi and his cabal for the crisis and calling for free speech and free elections. “The level of popular fury is volcanic,” Xu wrote, “and a people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fear.”
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My column notes the incongruity between China’s 21st-century science and its 19th-century politics, between its heroic doctors and its bungling leaders. That’s what Marx would call a contradiction, and as Professor Xu says: “Regardless of how good they are at controlling the Internet, they can’t keep all 1.4 billion mouths in China shut.” Please read the column; I’ll try to get a Chinese-language version up soon as well.
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