CRISIS IN DISCOURSE
In recent years, China has moved up the value chain. No longer the world’s cheap factory, it has passed on the manufacturing torch to countries like India, Malaysia, and Vietnam. However, some things are still made in China—which the Western media will not let the country forget. Of course, some of this recent scapegoating has focused on the wrong target. The novel coronavirus itself was not made in China. Believed to have come from an animal, an outbreak of the virus could have, in theory, emerged in any place where humans do not take necessary precautions when in contact with wildlife. The epidemic, on the other hand, was made in China. This is not because of the Chinese people, or Chinese culinary practices, or Chinese culture—the epidemic has reached the point it has today because of the poor governance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In China, the CCP has the incentive and means to downplay and hide information about the epidemic— primarily online but also in hospital reports. This kind of censorship was initially used by local officials to prevent the central government from catching wind of the problem. However, cover-ups remained after the management of the epidemic was assumed by central authorities. No longer about saving face within the Chinese government, a portion of such a lack of transparency is about saving face on the international stage. This is more than just an authoritarian impulse to control the flow of information. Among the biggest fears of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his counterparts is weakness—the perception that they are no longer in control. As the virus spreads, Xi Jinping’s governance tactics become discredited in the overseas eyes of both his allies and enemies. The last time an outbreak like this happened in China was in 2003, when severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected over 8,000 people and killed 774. Since then, the media environment has undergone an extraordinary transformation. This, in turn, has changed the way we confront disease and crisis. Relative to 2003, the public has a different role in the way current events are conceptualized today. No longer having to seek out the news, we receive it in a deluge of live updates on social media. Even in China, where social media is limited by the Great Firewall, the ubiquity of news has made ordinary people engage with current events in a new way, on platforms like Weibo and WeChat. For the CCP, the optics of the recent coronavirus epidemic are higher stakes than they were during SARS. This visibility has made the party feel particularly vulnerable, which has resulted with even more draconian control. The Chinese government’s insistence on suppressing discourse about the coronavirus prevents its control measures from functioning at full force. The discourse surrounding the coronavirus has been suppressed in some places and amplified in others. This swelling virality has only encouraged more fear. In China, due to the fears of the government, the epidemic has been exacerbated by a lack of discourse. In the US, irrational panic has prevented people from respecting the actuality and gravity of the issue. Across the world, this sense of alarm has prompted bigoted scapegoating to come out of the woodwork both online and in people’s actions. Discourse shapes the way that we conceive of an
05
SCIENCE + TECH
BY Emily Rust ILLUSTRATION Sylvia Atwood DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt
resources towards eradicating the slightest hint of any person speaking about the virus, and I promise you that any conversation or literature pertaining to the virus will be completely eliminated during the next seven days.” The Onion article is dismally accurate, aside from its absolute blame on Xi Jinping. In reality, it was the Wuhan authorities who stood for most of the “elimination of conversation and literature” during the outbreak’s early stages, as they channeled resources into the containment of discourse rather than the containment of disease. +++ Although Xi Jinping’s policies have worsened the Last week, New York Times reporter Chris Buckley central-local disconnect, this is far from the first time it tweeted a photo of a red banner in Wuhan that reads “ has brought harm to the Chinese people. An infamous 科学防，不恐慌，莫让谣言帮倒忙.” (Scientific preven- example is the economic campaign known as the Great tion, don’t panic, don’t let rumors do more harm than Leap Forward, in which local officials felt pressured by help.) Political banners like this are common in China, their superiors’ unrealistic production goals to falsify usually displaying dogmatic slogans that encourage grain yields. Largely due to this disconnect, the Great leading a “文明” (civilized) life, celebrating the Leap Forward resulted in the starvation of millions of harmony of the supposedly united Chinese people, people in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In December, local officials silenced doctors and imbuing oneself with “Xi Jinping thought”. ‘No panicking’ and ‘no rumormongering’ are and other whistleblowers for warning about what solid standards to live by no matter where you reside. they feared could develop into a SARS-like epidemic. However, the banners shed light on a deplorable aspect According to the New York Times, officials told doctors of the Chinese government’s initial handling of the not to “use the words viral pneumonia” in their reports. outbreak. While US discourse of the epidemic has One doctor was forced by police to sign a statement involved excessive hysteria, far too much time has that he had engaged in “illegal behavior” for raising passed before any kind of discourse was allowed in red flags. Following an announcement in late January China. The virus was first detected in December, but that the disease did indeed spread from human to the full-scale fight against the epidemic only began human, it was revealed that fourteen medical workers in the third week of January. The government’s more had been infected by a single patient. The city governthan month-long delay in acknowledging and tackling ment’s calculated denial of the virus exposed Wuhan’s the virus results from a problem that has plagued party 11 million people to a danger that doctors had perceived politics throughout the history of the People’s Republic early on. of China (PRC). The red banners are in place not just to instill calmThis problem is the disconnect between the central ness in the traumatized Wuhan population, but to party leadership based in Beijing and the local officials serve as a warning to people who are tempted to share who oversee provinces, townships, and villages. When information condemning the government. In fact, one it comes to sensitive issues, these local officials err of the whistleblowers who was reprimanded by police towards secrecy for fear of being dismissed or other- has now contracted the virus, a tangible and devaswise penalized, a dynamic that goes hand in hand with tating consequence of the central-local disconnect. As the punishment of whistleblowers. Just as the outbreak reported by the Shanghai-based, online publication and spread of SARS in 2003 was concealed by local offi- Sixth Tone, this doctor, named Li Wenliang, had “been cials for months, Wuhan authorities made great efforts working on the front lines of the epidemic” until he to downplay the virus in December. In fact, Mayor of began to develop a cough and fever. He and his parents Wuhan Zhou Xianwang shifted some of the blame to were hospitalized in early January. In a text message Beijing in an interview with China Central Television to Chris Buckley, Doctor Li wrote, “If the officials had in late January. Wearing a face mask, Mayor Zhou disclosed information about the epidemic earlier, I explained that his delay in releasing sensitive informa- think it would have been a lot better. There should be tion was a result of rules that required approval from more openness and transparency.” Beijing. Though implicit, this critique of Xi Jinping’s Now that the handling of the epidemic has been top-down leadership style was shockingly blunt. extended to Beijing, it is central authorities who A headline by the satirical publication the Onion are in charge of stifling discourse of the virus. Last captured the dark undertone of Buckley’s banner well: Friday, Hu Xijing, editor of the CCP-controlled publi“Xi Jinping Vows To Combat Coronavirus By Making cation the Global Times, wrote an article criticizing It Illegal To Mention Within A Week.” A fabricated the government for its lack of transparency and delay quote in the article reads, “We are directing massive in confronting the epidemic. Within a few hours, the issue. The flow of constant information that we are subject to has strengthened our feeling that we must always have something to say, for fear of falling behind. As this Indy editor, however, has learned over the last few weeks, being levelheaded is not the same thing as being aloof. There is no reason to create a sense of crisis when that energy could be spent on individuals and families who are actually impacted by the virus. Empathy and solidarity rarely sound like hysteria.
07 FEB 2020
