I want to zoom in for a moment on what it meant, in the context of Xi's China, for Li Wenliang to be a 'whistleblower.'
Li didn't go to the media with a story. He wasn't posting information that he knew to be confidential, or secret. He was warning fellow professionals - his medical school alumni, in a chat group - about a potential health risk.
He may well have known that even that was potentially risky speech. Or he may have thought that he was doing his professional and personal duty, and not realized the lines he had accidentally crossed.
But in the PRC of the moment, that *normal* speech - a professional raising a concern with professionals - strayed into what the state considered criminal speech. This may have been a deliberate order on the virus specifically, or it may just have been 'normal' police work.
Either way, it's a reminder that virtually *any* critical or warning speech, performed in even a semi-public forum in the PRC now, has the potential to be dangerous. What does that mean to, for instance, an engineer who sees a failing in a project?
Not all of that speech *will* be treated as dangerous. But the potential - especially in the mess of local interests, big Party-business, and the Party-state - is always there.
