The coronavirus epidemic ranks as the biggest crisis to have hit Xi Jinping, China’s Communist party leader since he took power in 2012. Not only has the outbreak brought the world’s second-largest economy to a grinding halt, but it also undermines the party’s public picture of competence.
Chinese scientists knew about the COVID-19 virus and also were aware of its severity way back in December 2019. In late December, a number of genomics companies tested samples from sick patients in Wuhan and noticed alarming similarities between their illnesses and the 2002 SARS virus, the Sunday Times of London reported, citing Chinese business news site Caixin Global.
As is per protocol in a communist society, Beijing was immediately notified. The researchers received a gag-order on January 3, from China’s National Health Commission, with instructions to destroy the samples.
The fateful banquet
On January 18, about six weeks after the coronavirus started to spread in Wuhan, the city’s Baibuting district was preparing for its 20th annual mass banquet. City officials were going to attempt a world record for the largest number of dishes served. A total of 13,986 dishes were prepared by members of 40,000 families, with many showing up to eat the goodies.
This fateful banquet was followed by the mass movement of some 5 million people fleeing the city, some to go back to traditional family homes for the Chinese New Year that began on January 25. The city was not quarantined until January 22. By then, it was too late to contain the virus.
The sad truth is that city officials knew about the virus spread for at least three weeks before the banquet, and choose to go ahead with their plans because they had been issued orders to suppress the news.
It appears to be obvious that the cover-up was going on even when officials from the CDC visited Wuhan on January 8, where officials intentionally withheld information that hospital workers had been infected by patients — a telltale sign of contagion.
Censorship of negative news
It is far too late to wring our hands and say, “What if the world had only known about the virus sooner?” Jude Blanchette, a China analyst at CSIS, a Washington-based think-tank, has this to say about the regime in China: “There’s a natural inclination for party officials at all levels to bury negative information and censor dissenting views irrespective of who’s in charge in Beijing. But under Xi Jinping, the inclination to suppress has become endemic and, in this case, contributed to a prolonged period of inaction that allowed the virus to spread.”
Despite the evidence of a cover-up, China has made some impressive moves that are amazing. By January 10, researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai had sequenced the coronavirus gene, a key step in our understanding of the virus. China built two 1,000 bed hospitals in just 10 days.
But even with all that has transpired since the coronavirus was first identified back in December, I am sure many people are wondering if the global outbreak could have been avoided – if only one government had decided to be honest with its own people and its neighbors.
