China on COVID-19
BY KIRTANA KRISHNAKUMAR '20 & JASMINE WU '22
Umbrellas lie strewn across the ground, forgotten. Their owners have scattered, coughing and wheezing as tear gas circulates through the square. A police officer, clad in a hefty gas mask drags one protestor by the arms, a faceless symbol of oppression.
Where is this brutality happening? Well, it depends on who’s telling the story. In the United States, the president would say Hong Kong. In China, the Communist Party would say the United States. And they’re both right, and that’s the most troubling part—the line between democracy and authoritarianism has blurred, all during a global pandemic.
Ironically, the deficiencies of the healthcare system and complicity of the government during the pandemic should have undermined China’s authoritarian system and sparked a desire for reform. However, it has somehow strengthened that very system due to Western democracies’ failures and China’s ability to capitalize on them. Now, only China’s citizens can challenge their nation’s authoritarianism and human rights violations, but China’s growing success on the international stage may exacerbate complacency.
However, the path to China’s success remains complex: the history of its healthcare system, the development of an effective emergency report system, authoritarianism’s impact on China’s COVID-19 mismanagement, and its international role have all contributed to the current situation.
Part 1: China’s Healthcare History
While it has certainly improved since the SARS outbreak in 2003, China’s healthcare system remains inefficient and expensive. Foreign Policy writer Andreea Brinza explains that 95% of the population is covered by health insurance, but it’s “mostly private and always pricey.” There are four types of insurance in China—one for urban employees, one for urban residents, general government insurance, and private insurance. Still, none of these cover everything. In fact, out-of-pocket costs constitute almost a third of health care expenses, and Chinese patients pay almost 30%. The rural population pays the majority of out-of-pocket costs since the government health insurance does not cover much. Even when they do seek out hospital visits, though, it can take months to get an appointment; appointments are in such high demand that they can be resold on the black market.
Furthermore, before the government recently outlawed this, patients would give doctors cash in red envelopes (hongbao) to ensure they are well cared for. Without influence or bribes, people struggle to secure proper medical counsel. In general, hospitals operate like businesses—so much so that patients will often be advised to take and pay for multiple unnecessary tests and still not receive a proper diagnosis. The Chinese government controls lower-priced medical supplies for accessibility, allowing hospitals to increase costs for equipment, procedures, and specialized drugs. Since doctors are also known to receive “gifts” from pharmaceutical companies, they have double the incentive to increase these prices. Unfortunately, the high costs still don’t ensure quality healthcare. General practitioners help patients maintain their overall health, reducing the need for specialized doctors and high expenses. However, according to The Economist, only 5% of Chinese doctors are primary care physicians, compared to 23% in most developed nations, weakening the first line of defense. Moreover, the WHO says only half of Chinese doctors have a bachelor’s degree, the majority of whom work in large urban hospitals. But rural areas don’t simply lack qualified doctors; they don’t even have enough hospitals since most of China’s healthcare investment has gone into cities. In general, Business Insider journalist Aria Bendix explains that many Chinese patients don’t trust physicians or the healthcare system. As trust dwindles, violence emerges: “[b]etween 2002 and 2012, violence against medical personnel in China rose by around 23% each year.”
Despite the current issues, China’s government has certainly improved the general healthcare system from before the 2003 SARS outbreak, when most of the rural population had no insurance at all. Since then, out-of-pocket costs have decreased by almost 30%. The Chinese government still aims to reduce out-of-pocket costs another 5% by 2030, but Brinza worries that “marginal improvement isn’t enough in a rapidly aging country.” Moreover, COVID-19 reveals bigger structural faults that the government must address first.
After SARS, experts identified three major issues with the Chinese healthcare system: limited rural healthcare access, a faulty disease reporting system, and untrained doctors. China improved its healthcare access by covering more people with insurance, but it spent most of its time developing reporting systems and training programs for unknown diseases. New York Times’s Steven Lee Myers describes the Contagious Disease National Direct Reporting System, created by the nation’s CDC, as the “heart of [China’s] defenses.” Under this new system, hospitals would automatically send reports to health officers in Beijing who were trained to spot potential outbreaks. But China didn’t stop there; the nation took efforts to train its healthcare workers and test the systems too. In July 2019, China’s CDC held the “nation’s biggest infectious outbreak training exercise,” an online drill with over 8,200 officials. The exercise tested how effectively doctors and government officials could communicate, track, and reduce the spread of a hypothetical virus. All these efforts were intended to prevent an outbreak like SARS, and China seemed quite confident in its ability to do so. After all, the systems did successfully contain the avian influenza in 2013 and a pneumonic plague last November.
Part 2: COVID-19 Management
Despite the government’s boasts, the systems failed during COVID-19. China’s healthcare system was undeniably overwhelmed, and the virus escalated into a pandemic. Bloomberg, a Fortune journalist, documents that over 23,000 doctors and nurses were sent to the Hubei province to care for the excess of coronavirus patients. In doing so, these doctors risked their health due to the nationwide shortage of protective gear and test kits. This also left other provinces with a shortage of medical personnel, and hospitals often had to turn away new patients to prevent their own medical staff from contracting the virus. Since these doctors already worked overtime caring for COVID-19 patients, they could not care for others with dire medical conditions. So how did the system fail and create such a catastrophe?
As it often is with China, the answer is disputed. First, COVID-19 has unique qualities that make it more difficult to handle than the avian influenza and the pneumonic plague. The CDC reports that there was no ongoing person-to-person transmission with the bird flu, which likely prevented a dangerous outbreak. As for the pneumonic plague, writer Laurie Garrett explains that even though there is no vaccine, several antibiotics are known to treat it. Hence, it seems these illnesses consequently resulted in far smaller outbreaks. Even so, analysts suggest that the reporting system was inherently flawed due to China’s authoritarian system—not just weak healthcare. Journalist Myers explains that local officials instructed doctors to hold off on reporting. Hospitals should have transferred patient data to high officials instantly under the new “automatic” reporting system, but they deferred to local ones instead—to apparently “avoid surprising and embarrassing local leaders.” Some doctors said they were “unsure how to report early cases,” but Chinese health authorities warned them to highlight unusual symptoms and call them “pneumonia of unknown etiology” or “unknown cause.” Unfortunately, due to a “political aversion to sharing bad news,” these local officials hoped to deal with the situation themselves without informing higher officials. It seems that the warning systems existed, but local officials simply didn’t use them properly to save their political careers.
The Chinese government itself has tried to blame these local officials, claiming that higher officials learned of the issue too late. The Associated Press reports that the government likely realized COVID-19 was a pandemic after the first case outside of China, but officials only only made a public announcement a week later, a delay it has been often criticized for. Some experts claim that taking immediate action could have “cut the number of infections by two-thirds,” but the government failed to respond promptly. Others argue that the officials prioritized social stability over transparency, and they were right to take “decisive action in private given the information available to them.”
Evidently, it’s still unclear if the central government erred in this first week, or if the local officials are most at fault. It’s also unclear if the patchy reporting was entirely local officials’ fault. Business Insider’s Aria Bendix describes that at the start of the crisis, people talking about the coronavirus outbreak were detained for “spreading rumors.” Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, a whistleblower for the virus, was forced to sign a letter claiming he made false comments about COVID-19. High officials, including President Xi Jinping, have attempted to pass everything off as a local governance failure. However, people are demanding answers. Respect for doctors has grown alongside anger towards the government. While the federal government blamed local officials, the people blamed President Xi Jinping himself for creating a “culture of fear and subservience” in the government.
Part 3: Authoritarianism
Certainly, party loyalty has superseded expertise during Xi’s presidency. New York Times writer Li Yuan explains that technocrats helped China grow the most in the 1990s and 2000s. However, Xi favors “loyal political cadres” instead to concentrate his own power. While these cadres do get things done, many worry that officials have “more concern for pleasing their bosses than taking care of the people they allegedly served.” This need to please higher officials sometimes compromises the people’s safety. New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos highlighted this in his book Age of Ambition: corrupt officials managed the development of China’s high speed rail system, and in their rush to meet deadlines, bypassed important safety regulations. Their negligence resulted in the devastating Wenzhou train crash. And this is just one example: thousands of children died in poorly constructed schools during the Sichuan earthquake, citizens have found chemicals tainting their milk, and yet—as Yuan says perfectly—officials escape unscathed by “keeping everything else vague and evading responsibility at all costs when things go wrong.”
All these issues continued during Xi’s so-called anti-corruption campaign, which increased his political power by eliminating his rivals. His total political control and propaganda stifle any protests. The Associated Press goes so far as to call Xi “China’s most authoritarian leader in decades,” and explains that “increasing political repression…made officials more hesitant to report cases without a clear green light from the top.” Hence, even if President Xi and his circle of advisors didn’t withhold information about the virus themselves, they’re still at fault for creating an opaque, overly centralized system.
Part 4: Post-COVID Politics & Propaganda
The Communist Party’s recent actions suggest that they too worry about the negative impact this governance could have on their image, but with authoritarian methods, they might just salvage their reputation. China has been sending medical experts to Italy, shipping thousands of tests to the Philippines, and pledging humanitarian aid to countries all over the world. Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin from The New York Times suggest that Xi is hoping to “repair [China’s] severely damaged international image” and secure its reputation as a “responsible and generous world power.” It definitely helps that Western democracies failed to prepare themselves for the virus, despite having far more time to do so.
While Xi attempts to portray China as a considerate and helpful nation, he has also been highlighting the West’s failure. Bruno Maçães, a former secretary of state for European Affairs in Portugal, describes how “[t]he coronavirus pandemic has become a battleground,” and Xi intends to use the situation to “play up the superiority of [China’s] model.” He warns that this foreshadows competitions between superpowers to address future global issues, undermining international cooperation. Even so, countries that benefit from China’s benevolence ignore democratic critics, suggesting that China may succeed in establishing its dominance worldwide.
Meanwhile, Western countries are countering by opening investigations into the coronavirus’ origins in China—a futile effort, compared to the increasing efficacy of China’s propaganda. Journalist James Palmer from Foreign Policy reports that most of the WHO’s member states have agreed to go ahead with this investigation. However, he predicts that these investigations will likely fall flat. China maintains a lot of influence in the WHO and “[o]nly Chinese officials possess the bureaucratic knowledge and coercive power required to meaningfully investigate the possibilities.” Consequently, even countries allied with China voted in favor of the investigation; after all, “the odds of the organization producing a result unfavorable to Beijing are low.” However, these nations may back off as China retaliates through economic and social pressures. Atlantic journalist Kathy Gilsinan highlights how China began taxing Australian goods when the Prime Minister called for an investigation. And of course, China’s feud with the United States has only escalated. Gilsinan notes a shift in China’s international propaganda efforts: rather than simply propagating Chinese nationalist sentiment as it usually does, the Communist Party now uses Russian disinformation tactics to spread confusion and conspiracies against its enemies—namely, the United States. Unfortunately, the Party’s tactics have been quite effective as President Trump desperately tries to blame his ineffective management on someone else, be it the Democrats or China. Given the existing confusion with the pandemic, China can experiment with effective exaggerations. This reveals the frightening truth that after the virus, China’s overseas propaganda will only emerge stronger.
Part 5: The Future
In general, China’s propaganda has only highlighted the West’s failures, reducing the democratic nations’ credibility and elevating the authoritarianism that was so criticized at the start of COVID-19. If Western countries comment on China’s initial failure to contain the virus, China can just as easily counter that they provided warnings early enough for countries like the United States to prepare. With its trade influence, China could even threaten to further destabilize Western countries’ economies, though that depends on the state of the economy as the crisis continues. Most importantly, China’s propaganda will be stronger than ever, and the recent Black Lives Matter movement in the United States against police brutality will only fuel that. With this issue, China is gaining the ideological upper hand: if the United States criticizes its control over Hong Kong, China can easily respond by mentioning the American government’s treatment of protestors.
Despite China’s bureaucratic obscurity and unreliable healthcare, which enabled the pandemic, Xi appears to be winning his battle against Western dominance. His international propaganda grows stronger, and some well-timed disputes enable him to spotlight the West’s failures. While many countries turn to China for aid, Chinese citizens remain the last line of defense before the world favors authoritarianism over democracy. NPR journalist Emily Feng recounts that about 20 lawyers have banded together to help families in Wuhan sue the government. However, it remains unclear what impact this lawsuit will have—if any. In his 2009 dystopia The Fat Years, Chinese novelist Chan Koonchung explored how China’s citizens could engage in a kind of “collective amnesia” of, in this case, the fictional atrocities of the state. But as he told The New York Times, even he was “dumbfounded” by how quickly people have moved past the pandemic. Despite the Sichuan earthquake, a severe winter, uprisings, dissident arrests, and the global financial crisis, Chan reflects that the city of Beijing maintained its “exuberance.” Apparently, people “seemed to remember only the Beijing Olympics and how China came out of the financial crisis stronger than Western countries.” With the Communist Party’s tight control over the media and thus history itself, it can be easy to forget. However, Chan believes that the people “play the roles of perpetrator and victim at the same time.” He suggests that “people choose to forget,” making propaganda a powerful weapon. Considering the recent protests, this grim assessment appears to be more than just true; it’s the key for systematic oppression, so even if the Black Lives Matter movement finally succeeds, a new reign of oppression will be waiting to take its place.
Where is this brutality happening? Well, it depends on who’s telling the story. In the United States, the president would say Hong Kong. In China, the Communist Party would say the United States. And they’re both right, and that’s the most troubling part—the line between democracy and authoritarianism has blurred, all during a global pandemic.
Ironically, the deficiencies of the healthcare system and complicity of the government during the pandemic should have undermined China’s authoritarian system and sparked a desire for reform. However, it has somehow strengthened that very system due to Western democracies’ failures and China’s ability to capitalize on them. Now, only China’s citizens can challenge their nation’s authoritarianism and human rights violations, but China’s growing success on the international stage may exacerbate complacency.
However, the path to China’s success remains complex: the history of its healthcare system, the development of an effective emergency report system, authoritarianism’s impact on China’s COVID-19 mismanagement, and its international role have all contributed to the current situation.
Part 1: China’s Healthcare History
While it has certainly improved since the SARS outbreak in 2003, China’s healthcare system remains inefficient and expensive. Foreign Policy writer Andreea Brinza explains that 95% of the population is covered by health insurance, but it’s “mostly private and always pricey.” There are four types of insurance in China—one for urban employees, one for urban residents, general government insurance, and private insurance. Still, none of these cover everything. In fact, out-of-pocket costs constitute almost a third of health care expenses, and Chinese patients pay almost 30%. The rural population pays the majority of out-of-pocket costs since the government health insurance does not cover much. Even when they do seek out hospital visits, though, it can take months to get an appointment; appointments are in such high demand that they can be resold on the black market.
Furthermore, before the government recently outlawed this, patients would give doctors cash in red envelopes (hongbao) to ensure they are well cared for. Without influence or bribes, people struggle to secure proper medical counsel. In general, hospitals operate like businesses—so much so that patients will often be advised to take and pay for multiple unnecessary tests and still not receive a proper diagnosis. The Chinese government controls lower-priced medical supplies for accessibility, allowing hospitals to increase costs for equipment, procedures, and specialized drugs. Since doctors are also known to receive “gifts” from pharmaceutical companies, they have double the incentive to increase these prices. Unfortunately, the high costs still don’t ensure quality healthcare. General practitioners help patients maintain their overall health, reducing the need for specialized doctors and high expenses. However, according to The Economist, only 5% of Chinese doctors are primary care physicians, compared to 23% in most developed nations, weakening the first line of defense. Moreover, the WHO says only half of Chinese doctors have a bachelor’s degree, the majority of whom work in large urban hospitals. But rural areas don’t simply lack qualified doctors; they don’t even have enough hospitals since most of China’s healthcare investment has gone into cities. In general, Business Insider journalist Aria Bendix explains that many Chinese patients don’t trust physicians or the healthcare system. As trust dwindles, violence emerges: “[b]etween 2002 and 2012, violence against medical personnel in China rose by around 23% each year.”
Despite the current issues, China’s government has certainly improved the general healthcare system from before the 2003 SARS outbreak, when most of the rural population had no insurance at all. Since then, out-of-pocket costs have decreased by almost 30%. The Chinese government still aims to reduce out-of-pocket costs another 5% by 2030, but Brinza worries that “marginal improvement isn’t enough in a rapidly aging country.” Moreover, COVID-19 reveals bigger structural faults that the government must address first.
After SARS, experts identified three major issues with the Chinese healthcare system: limited rural healthcare access, a faulty disease reporting system, and untrained doctors. China improved its healthcare access by covering more people with insurance, but it spent most of its time developing reporting systems and training programs for unknown diseases. New York Times’s Steven Lee Myers describes the Contagious Disease National Direct Reporting System, created by the nation’s CDC, as the “heart of [China’s] defenses.” Under this new system, hospitals would automatically send reports to health officers in Beijing who were trained to spot potential outbreaks. But China didn’t stop there; the nation took efforts to train its healthcare workers and test the systems too. In July 2019, China’s CDC held the “nation’s biggest infectious outbreak training exercise,” an online drill with over 8,200 officials. The exercise tested how effectively doctors and government officials could communicate, track, and reduce the spread of a hypothetical virus. All these efforts were intended to prevent an outbreak like SARS, and China seemed quite confident in its ability to do so. After all, the systems did successfully contain the avian influenza in 2013 and a pneumonic plague last November.
Part 2: COVID-19 Management
Despite the government’s boasts, the systems failed during COVID-19. China’s healthcare system was undeniably overwhelmed, and the virus escalated into a pandemic. Bloomberg, a Fortune journalist, documents that over 23,000 doctors and nurses were sent to the Hubei province to care for the excess of coronavirus patients. In doing so, these doctors risked their health due to the nationwide shortage of protective gear and test kits. This also left other provinces with a shortage of medical personnel, and hospitals often had to turn away new patients to prevent their own medical staff from contracting the virus. Since these doctors already worked overtime caring for COVID-19 patients, they could not care for others with dire medical conditions. So how did the system fail and create such a catastrophe?
As it often is with China, the answer is disputed. First, COVID-19 has unique qualities that make it more difficult to handle than the avian influenza and the pneumonic plague. The CDC reports that there was no ongoing person-to-person transmission with the bird flu, which likely prevented a dangerous outbreak. As for the pneumonic plague, writer Laurie Garrett explains that even though there is no vaccine, several antibiotics are known to treat it. Hence, it seems these illnesses consequently resulted in far smaller outbreaks. Even so, analysts suggest that the reporting system was inherently flawed due to China’s authoritarian system—not just weak healthcare. Journalist Myers explains that local officials instructed doctors to hold off on reporting. Hospitals should have transferred patient data to high officials instantly under the new “automatic” reporting system, but they deferred to local ones instead—to apparently “avoid surprising and embarrassing local leaders.” Some doctors said they were “unsure how to report early cases,” but Chinese health authorities warned them to highlight unusual symptoms and call them “pneumonia of unknown etiology” or “unknown cause.” Unfortunately, due to a “political aversion to sharing bad news,” these local officials hoped to deal with the situation themselves without informing higher officials. It seems that the warning systems existed, but local officials simply didn’t use them properly to save their political careers.
The Chinese government itself has tried to blame these local officials, claiming that higher officials learned of the issue too late. The Associated Press reports that the government likely realized COVID-19 was a pandemic after the first case outside of China, but officials only only made a public announcement a week later, a delay it has been often criticized for. Some experts claim that taking immediate action could have “cut the number of infections by two-thirds,” but the government failed to respond promptly. Others argue that the officials prioritized social stability over transparency, and they were right to take “decisive action in private given the information available to them.”
Evidently, it’s still unclear if the central government erred in this first week, or if the local officials are most at fault. It’s also unclear if the patchy reporting was entirely local officials’ fault. Business Insider’s Aria Bendix describes that at the start of the crisis, people talking about the coronavirus outbreak were detained for “spreading rumors.” Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, a whistleblower for the virus, was forced to sign a letter claiming he made false comments about COVID-19. High officials, including President Xi Jinping, have attempted to pass everything off as a local governance failure. However, people are demanding answers. Respect for doctors has grown alongside anger towards the government. While the federal government blamed local officials, the people blamed President Xi Jinping himself for creating a “culture of fear and subservience” in the government.
Part 3: Authoritarianism
Certainly, party loyalty has superseded expertise during Xi’s presidency. New York Times writer Li Yuan explains that technocrats helped China grow the most in the 1990s and 2000s. However, Xi favors “loyal political cadres” instead to concentrate his own power. While these cadres do get things done, many worry that officials have “more concern for pleasing their bosses than taking care of the people they allegedly served.” This need to please higher officials sometimes compromises the people’s safety. New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos highlighted this in his book Age of Ambition: corrupt officials managed the development of China’s high speed rail system, and in their rush to meet deadlines, bypassed important safety regulations. Their negligence resulted in the devastating Wenzhou train crash. And this is just one example: thousands of children died in poorly constructed schools during the Sichuan earthquake, citizens have found chemicals tainting their milk, and yet—as Yuan says perfectly—officials escape unscathed by “keeping everything else vague and evading responsibility at all costs when things go wrong.”
All these issues continued during Xi’s so-called anti-corruption campaign, which increased his political power by eliminating his rivals. His total political control and propaganda stifle any protests. The Associated Press goes so far as to call Xi “China’s most authoritarian leader in decades,” and explains that “increasing political repression…made officials more hesitant to report cases without a clear green light from the top.” Hence, even if President Xi and his circle of advisors didn’t withhold information about the virus themselves, they’re still at fault for creating an opaque, overly centralized system.
Part 4: Post-COVID Politics & Propaganda
The Communist Party’s recent actions suggest that they too worry about the negative impact this governance could have on their image, but with authoritarian methods, they might just salvage their reputation. China has been sending medical experts to Italy, shipping thousands of tests to the Philippines, and pledging humanitarian aid to countries all over the world. Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin from The New York Times suggest that Xi is hoping to “repair [China’s] severely damaged international image” and secure its reputation as a “responsible and generous world power.” It definitely helps that Western democracies failed to prepare themselves for the virus, despite having far more time to do so.
While Xi attempts to portray China as a considerate and helpful nation, he has also been highlighting the West’s failure. Bruno Maçães, a former secretary of state for European Affairs in Portugal, describes how “[t]he coronavirus pandemic has become a battleground,” and Xi intends to use the situation to “play up the superiority of [China’s] model.” He warns that this foreshadows competitions between superpowers to address future global issues, undermining international cooperation. Even so, countries that benefit from China’s benevolence ignore democratic critics, suggesting that China may succeed in establishing its dominance worldwide.
Meanwhile, Western countries are countering by opening investigations into the coronavirus’ origins in China—a futile effort, compared to the increasing efficacy of China’s propaganda. Journalist James Palmer from Foreign Policy reports that most of the WHO’s member states have agreed to go ahead with this investigation. However, he predicts that these investigations will likely fall flat. China maintains a lot of influence in the WHO and “[o]nly Chinese officials possess the bureaucratic knowledge and coercive power required to meaningfully investigate the possibilities.” Consequently, even countries allied with China voted in favor of the investigation; after all, “the odds of the organization producing a result unfavorable to Beijing are low.” However, these nations may back off as China retaliates through economic and social pressures. Atlantic journalist Kathy Gilsinan highlights how China began taxing Australian goods when the Prime Minister called for an investigation. And of course, China’s feud with the United States has only escalated. Gilsinan notes a shift in China’s international propaganda efforts: rather than simply propagating Chinese nationalist sentiment as it usually does, the Communist Party now uses Russian disinformation tactics to spread confusion and conspiracies against its enemies—namely, the United States. Unfortunately, the Party’s tactics have been quite effective as President Trump desperately tries to blame his ineffective management on someone else, be it the Democrats or China. Given the existing confusion with the pandemic, China can experiment with effective exaggerations. This reveals the frightening truth that after the virus, China’s overseas propaganda will only emerge stronger.
Part 5: The Future
In general, China’s propaganda has only highlighted the West’s failures, reducing the democratic nations’ credibility and elevating the authoritarianism that was so criticized at the start of COVID-19. If Western countries comment on China’s initial failure to contain the virus, China can just as easily counter that they provided warnings early enough for countries like the United States to prepare. With its trade influence, China could even threaten to further destabilize Western countries’ economies, though that depends on the state of the economy as the crisis continues. Most importantly, China’s propaganda will be stronger than ever, and the recent Black Lives Matter movement in the United States against police brutality will only fuel that. With this issue, China is gaining the ideological upper hand: if the United States criticizes its control over Hong Kong, China can easily respond by mentioning the American government’s treatment of protestors.
Despite China’s bureaucratic obscurity and unreliable healthcare, which enabled the pandemic, Xi appears to be winning his battle against Western dominance. His international propaganda grows stronger, and some well-timed disputes enable him to spotlight the West’s failures. While many countries turn to China for aid, Chinese citizens remain the last line of defense before the world favors authoritarianism over democracy. NPR journalist Emily Feng recounts that about 20 lawyers have banded together to help families in Wuhan sue the government. However, it remains unclear what impact this lawsuit will have—if any. In his 2009 dystopia The Fat Years, Chinese novelist Chan Koonchung explored how China’s citizens could engage in a kind of “collective amnesia” of, in this case, the fictional atrocities of the state. But as he told The New York Times, even he was “dumbfounded” by how quickly people have moved past the pandemic. Despite the Sichuan earthquake, a severe winter, uprisings, dissident arrests, and the global financial crisis, Chan reflects that the city of Beijing maintained its “exuberance.” Apparently, people “seemed to remember only the Beijing Olympics and how China came out of the financial crisis stronger than Western countries.” With the Communist Party’s tight control over the media and thus history itself, it can be easy to forget. However, Chan believes that the people “play the roles of perpetrator and victim at the same time.” He suggests that “people choose to forget,” making propaganda a powerful weapon. Considering the recent protests, this grim assessment appears to be more than just true; it’s the key for systematic oppression, so even if the Black Lives Matter movement finally succeeds, a new reign of oppression will be waiting to take its place.
