Thread by @DavidNorthWSWS

Of all the vicious anti-Chinese propaganda pieces Ms. Li Yuan has churned out for the @NYTimes, this ranks among the filthiest. As always, her aim is to portray China's ZeroCovid policy -- which has kept deaths below 5,000 people -- as a monstrous violation of human rights. 1/

https://twitter.com/LiYuan6/status/1481208405146497030

The article is titled: "The Army of Millions Who Enforce China's #ZeroCovid Policy, at All Costs." Her technique is to sensationalize individual incidents -- actually reported in the Chinese press -- as examples of pervasive brutality. 2/

Li Yuan cites the following incidents: 1) a man in Xi'an who failed to gain admittance to a hospital died of a heart attack; 2) a pregnant woman, with an invalid Covid test, lost her baby; 3) two security guards beat up a man who was caught violating lockdown rules. 3/

These three incidents -- occurring in a country with 1.4 billion people -- are, for Li Yuan, horrifying examples of the Chinese nightmare, a land where, as she writes, "For the officials, virus control comes first. The people's lives, well-being and dignity come much later." 4/

What is one to make of this absurd and self-contradicting statement? Without "virus control" -- as the US example proves -- there is sickness and death. With #Omicron raging through the country, it is difficult to provide the victims with a dignified funeral. 5/

Li Yuan obscenely equates China's ZeroCovid to Nazi genocide, with the officials who implement the policy embodying "the banality of evil" -- the phrase used by Hannah Arendt to describe Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who directed the extermination of millions of Jews. 6/

Ms. Li Yuan seems to be totally unaware of US conditions. She reports that in China there are hospitals "that denied patients access to medical care and deprived their loved ones the chance to say goodbye." 7/

But this is a situation confronting thousands of people across the United States every day. The hospitals, as is widely reported, are running out of beds. The ICUs, in many parts of the country, lack space and staff to deal with the massive number of sick people. 8/

As for depriving "loved ones the chance to say goodbye," this is a basic health safety rule that is being enforced in hospitals and nursing homes throughout the United States." 9/

Li Yuan writes propaganda, whose purpose is 1) to incite anti-China hatred in support of US government preparations for conflict with China; 2) to discredit ZeroCovid as an alternative to the #herdimmunity immunity policies responsible for 850,000 US deaths. 10/10