Latest for @dwnews - Since the outbreak started, #Beijing’s handling of the epidemic has come under more scrutiny as the scale of the outbreak increases. I talked to prominent Chinese historian @zhanglifan about what it means to the Chinese regime. m.dw.com/en/coronavirus…
Some key quotes - “The epidemic exposes the flaws in the modernization of governance that the Chinese government has been boasting about. It is clear that China hasn't truly modernized its governance system, and 17 years after the SARS epidemic,...
... it also hasn't established a public epidemic prevention system.”
“This epidemic exposes another kind of virus in China, which is the "virus of bureaucracy." China's governance system remains totalitarian and hierarchical rather than modernized.
That's why when Beijing has to deal with a large-scale epidemic, its governance style remains fragile.”
“The Chinese government's mishandling of the epidemic has a lot to do with its censorship. However, in order to maintain the stability of the regime, they have no bandwidth for actually containing the virus outbreak.
The most important thing to the Chinese Communist Party is to safeguard its regime.”
“If we take a look at the people in charge of leading the efforts to contain the virus outbreak, it is obvious that none of them has any expertise in public health. This is an "amateur" team trying to give orders to a group of public health experts,...
... and their real function is not to contain the virus, but to maintain social stability in China.”
“This is one of the most challenging moments in the Chinese Communist Party's 70-year history. The first major crisis it faced was the Great Chinese Famine during Mao Zedong's era, and the second major crisis was the Tiananmen Square Protest in 1989. Now we have this crisis.”
“Unlike the first two crises, the internet has allowed information about the epidemic to be shared very quickly and widely, which exacerbates the level of challenge that the Chinese government has to deal with.”
“Even though Beijing tries to censor online discussion about the coronavirus epidemic, they still can't achieve a total blackout. Chinese people already know most of the facts about the epidemic. Even many Chinese officials probably know that they are lying about the epidemic.”
“The Chinese government is used to sharing positive news and concealing negative news. When they can no longer hide the negative news, they try to find ways to turn negative news into positive news. This also happened during the early stages of the coronavirus epidemic.”
“I think the next thing that China can do is to try to address the real issue. They will likely try to contain the outbreak and at the same time, keep controlling society.
Once they can secure the regime, they will start framing the epidemic as a reflection of the superiority of socialism. I think this is the likely outcome.”
