Wuhan in sunnier times What comparisons can be made, from a Chinese observer’s point of view, between the present Novel Corona Virus outbreak and SARS in 2003? How might the Chinese people see things differently?
As one who resided in China during the SARS outbreak, I offer a perspective or two.
John Guo
We must start, I think, with the fact that the Chinese Government has been for many years highly respected (if not loved); certainly, immediately post revolution. Subsequent to the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Chinese living standards and personal wealth and comfort have been rising. The population has had 30 years of constant growth and improved living conditions.
There remain in the cities pockets of poverty; and rural living conditions involve great hardship. Social security, apart from insurance provided with employment by large companies and docked from one’s wages, is close to absent. Basics are cheap; if you get sick you go to a public hospital and queue. The visit will be free, the medicine you will pay for. If you become seriously ill without insurance or savings, you are financially ruined. But none of this is new. Most of it is better and improving.
China encompasses a vast area with a population greater than the combined populations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, the USA, and all Western Europe. Imagine one single government managing all that and you get some notion of the monumental task and achievement in emerging from backward 1940s revolutionary chaos into the economic global powerhouse China is today. It’s no accident. The CCP has done a fair job.
And this was the feeling in 2003 as the country was changing leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. The ‘Three Represents’ was the Party’s mantra at that time. It was claimed to be an opening up of the Party to include businesspeople and the rich; let the bourgeoisie in! An absurd notion from a purely theoretical Marxist point of view, but thought necessary by a now governing party when remaining in power is the game. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ explained it all away.
Nonetheless, a generally good and optimistic feeling prevailed until SARS burst the bubble somewhat. SARS was mishandled. People were scared. In my company our employment as foreigners continued, but there were no consumers. Everyone wore masks. The company lost a lot of money, but no cities were shut down or quarantined as is the case now.
In 2003 such a medical disaster was not out of the question. Expectations of the government were lower, but hopeful. The country seemed slowly to be emerging from global isolation. The Olympic Games to be held in in 2008 were beckoning and amid the optimism, fear among the people was greater than anger. And anyway, there was nowhere to express it: social media did not exist. Nor was there hostility to foreigners, certainly not to American citizens. One must remember that the Chinese name for the United States is Mei Guo which translates as ‘beautiful country’.
Time passed, and, in forgiving the government, it was understood that lessons had been learned. That is why the present situation is perceived as far more dire. It has become clear that not everyone learned the lessons. The Wuhan doctors who so politically inconveniently raised the issue prior to a major Party conference and propaganda gala in Wuhan just prior to the Spring Festival immediately understood that this was potentially SARS Mark 2. For their efforts, in December 2019, they were detained, interrogated, and temporarily silenced. The horse bolted.
The Wuhan provincial government is unfairly taking the rap for this. Unfair because it would be a brave provincial government that dared allow bad news to overshadow CCP self-aggrandisement as the annual prelude to China’s major cultural event, the Spring Festival. But watch the Central Government distance itself in the weeks and months ahead.
Now we have whole cities locked down and quarantined. Overseas travel unavailable. Whole sections of the public service and business shut down. Industry stranded. Studies disrupted. Economic growth threatened. Political embarrassment. But the real difference is it comes during President Xi Jinping’s much heralded ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’.
The Chinese people had no say in the sudden declaration by Xi Jinping that he would now effectively rule for life. Imagine waking up in a liberal democracy one morning to find that, by fiat, the Prime Minister or President was in place for life with no system whatsoever to replace him or her! Even Donald Trump has not been able to achieve that.
The Chinese people had no say in the sudden declaration by Xi Jinping that he would now effectively rule for life.
That this was a truly great shock to the Chinese people has not been fully understood in the West. The only way it could be made to work was for Mr Xi, in assuming the mantle of Mao, to run a ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign and that is precisely what ‘The Great Rejuvenation Of The Chinese Nation’, allied with ‘Belt and Road’ is. Grand visions to entrance and enthuse and soothe the population while the Party reasserts its ironclad ideological control over freedom of speech and association. A parallel anti-corruption drive (both real and political) was extra and popular cover.
Deng Xiaoping’s crowning achievement of a stable system of 10-year limits on Presidents that allowed for the peaceful transfer of power from one ruler to the next was overnight swept asunder. There are no parties in China. Just leaders. Now there is no clear path to how the next one will be chosen. Long term systemic instability has been enshrined for the shorter term aims of Xi Jinping.
The Chinese regard the government and its leaders as the head of the family with certain Confucian expectations: Primarily the safety and security of that family. Mr Xi, by his overblown rhetoric to mask the more unpleasant aspects of his creeping party control over the private sphere, has assumed that familial headship and now risks being seen to have failed.
How does the ‘great rejuvenation’ look now? Stuck at home, with their cities shut down and overseas travel suspended, without work and their offices closed and aware that China has unleashed this plague upon the world the Chinese people are ashamed and embarrassed. What national pride they were developing has been stripped away in full view of the entire world.
What the Chinese people are suffering is the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese person: a loss of Face. A national loss of face. The nation, under the CCP, has lost international face. Face (mianzi) is a major matter within Chinese culture. To Western eyes it has been described over the years as ‘inscrutability’. A smile when we expect a look of embarrassment. It’s a Confucian need to always maintain and/or retain dignity of the self and the group.
What the Chinese people are suffering is the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese person: a loss of Face.
To bring shame upon the nation is the most egregious of sins. In this instance the Party has done that and done so by stealth and censorship to protect itself at the expense of the group, the collective; the nation.
Let me list here one or two comments posted on Chinese social media. These are translations so allow a little latitude. They each offer oblique critical sentiments. To be direct is to risk gaol. That they appeared at all means that either the censors couldn’t keep up or the Party decided it should allow some steam to be let off.
The comments emerged in the wake of the death of Wuhan ophthalmologist Doctor Li Wenliang who was the first to identify Novel Corona Virus in China as a developing new public health threat and who was punished by the CCP for ‘spreading rumours’. His alert was shut down so as not to spoil the Party’s Wuhan party. The party is over now.
Each set of words below is from a different person. It’s a mere sampling of some.
Wake up one night
I had an epiphany
It is not the miracle of one ten thousandths of an inch that the kind-hearted people almost expect
It’s a 100% conspiracy orchestrated by the unscrupulous people that’s bound to happen.
Can’t medicine save it?
Can anything save him?
Ignorance feeds the vicious flame of selfishness, and even when the epidemic is over, the human environment remains a living hell
The death of the righteous, the shame of the people!
The health of the community line is not only a sound.
As one who resided in China during the SARS outbreak, I offer a perspective or two.
John Guo
We must start, I think, with the fact that the Chinese Government has been for many years highly respected (if not loved); certainly, immediately post revolution. Subsequent to the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Chinese living standards and personal wealth and comfort have been rising. The population has had 30 years of constant growth and improved living conditions.
There remain in the cities pockets of poverty; and rural living conditions involve great hardship. Social security, apart from insurance provided with employment by large companies and docked from one’s wages, is close to absent. Basics are cheap; if you get sick you go to a public hospital and queue. The visit will be free, the medicine you will pay for. If you become seriously ill without insurance or savings, you are financially ruined. But none of this is new. Most of it is better and improving.
China encompasses a vast area with a population greater than the combined populations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, the USA, and all Western Europe. Imagine one single government managing all that and you get some notion of the monumental task and achievement in emerging from backward 1940s revolutionary chaos into the economic global powerhouse China is today. It’s no accident. The CCP has done a fair job.
And this was the feeling in 2003 as the country was changing leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. The ‘Three Represents’ was the Party’s mantra at that time. It was claimed to be an opening up of the Party to include businesspeople and the rich; let the bourgeoisie in! An absurd notion from a purely theoretical Marxist point of view, but thought necessary by a now governing party when remaining in power is the game. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ explained it all away.
Nonetheless, a generally good and optimistic feeling prevailed until SARS burst the bubble somewhat. SARS was mishandled. People were scared. In my company our employment as foreigners continued, but there were no consumers. Everyone wore masks. The company lost a lot of money, but no cities were shut down or quarantined as is the case now.
In 2003 such a medical disaster was not out of the question. Expectations of the government were lower, but hopeful. The country seemed slowly to be emerging from global isolation. The Olympic Games to be held in in 2008 were beckoning and amid the optimism, fear among the people was greater than anger. And anyway, there was nowhere to express it: social media did not exist. Nor was there hostility to foreigners, certainly not to American citizens. One must remember that the Chinese name for the United States is Mei Guo which translates as ‘beautiful country’.
Time passed, and, in forgiving the government, it was understood that lessons had been learned. That is why the present situation is perceived as far more dire. It has become clear that not everyone learned the lessons. The Wuhan doctors who so politically inconveniently raised the issue prior to a major Party conference and propaganda gala in Wuhan just prior to the Spring Festival immediately understood that this was potentially SARS Mark 2. For their efforts, in December 2019, they were detained, interrogated, and temporarily silenced. The horse bolted.
The Wuhan provincial government is unfairly taking the rap for this. Unfair because it would be a brave provincial government that dared allow bad news to overshadow CCP self-aggrandisement as the annual prelude to China’s major cultural event, the Spring Festival. But watch the Central Government distance itself in the weeks and months ahead.
Now we have whole cities locked down and quarantined. Overseas travel unavailable. Whole sections of the public service and business shut down. Industry stranded. Studies disrupted. Economic growth threatened. Political embarrassment. But the real difference is it comes during President Xi Jinping’s much heralded ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’.
The Chinese people had no say in the sudden declaration by Xi Jinping that he would now effectively rule for life. Imagine waking up in a liberal democracy one morning to find that, by fiat, the Prime Minister or President was in place for life with no system whatsoever to replace him or her! Even Donald Trump has not been able to achieve that.
The Chinese people had no say in the sudden declaration by Xi Jinping that he would now effectively rule for life.
That this was a truly great shock to the Chinese people has not been fully understood in the West. The only way it could be made to work was for Mr Xi, in assuming the mantle of Mao, to run a ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign and that is precisely what ‘The Great Rejuvenation Of The Chinese Nation’, allied with ‘Belt and Road’ is. Grand visions to entrance and enthuse and soothe the population while the Party reasserts its ironclad ideological control over freedom of speech and association. A parallel anti-corruption drive (both real and political) was extra and popular cover.
Deng Xiaoping’s crowning achievement of a stable system of 10-year limits on Presidents that allowed for the peaceful transfer of power from one ruler to the next was overnight swept asunder. There are no parties in China. Just leaders. Now there is no clear path to how the next one will be chosen. Long term systemic instability has been enshrined for the shorter term aims of Xi Jinping.
The Chinese regard the government and its leaders as the head of the family with certain Confucian expectations: Primarily the safety and security of that family. Mr Xi, by his overblown rhetoric to mask the more unpleasant aspects of his creeping party control over the private sphere, has assumed that familial headship and now risks being seen to have failed.
How does the ‘great rejuvenation’ look now? Stuck at home, with their cities shut down and overseas travel suspended, without work and their offices closed and aware that China has unleashed this plague upon the world the Chinese people are ashamed and embarrassed. What national pride they were developing has been stripped away in full view of the entire world.
What the Chinese people are suffering is the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese person: a loss of Face. A national loss of face. The nation, under the CCP, has lost international face. Face (mianzi) is a major matter within Chinese culture. To Western eyes it has been described over the years as ‘inscrutability’. A smile when we expect a look of embarrassment. It’s a Confucian need to always maintain and/or retain dignity of the self and the group.
What the Chinese people are suffering is the worst thing that can happen to a Chinese person: a loss of Face.
To bring shame upon the nation is the most egregious of sins. In this instance the Party has done that and done so by stealth and censorship to protect itself at the expense of the group, the collective; the nation.
Let me list here one or two comments posted on Chinese social media. These are translations so allow a little latitude. They each offer oblique critical sentiments. To be direct is to risk gaol. That they appeared at all means that either the censors couldn’t keep up or the Party decided it should allow some steam to be let off.
The comments emerged in the wake of the death of Wuhan ophthalmologist Doctor Li Wenliang who was the first to identify Novel Corona Virus in China as a developing new public health threat and who was punished by the CCP for ‘spreading rumours’. His alert was shut down so as not to spoil the Party’s Wuhan party. The party is over now.
Each set of words below is from a different person. It’s a mere sampling of some.
Wake up one night
I had an epiphany
It is not the miracle of one ten thousandths of an inch that the kind-hearted people almost expect
It’s a 100% conspiracy orchestrated by the unscrupulous people that’s bound to happen.
Can’t medicine save it?
Can anything save him?
Ignorance feeds the vicious flame of selfishness, and even when the epidemic is over, the human environment remains a living hell
The death of the righteous, the shame of the people!
The health of the community line is not only a sound.
