Medical personnel take patients to hospital after an outbreak of a Chinese Communist virus in Wuhan on January 17, 2020.
On the eve of the first anniversary of Wuhan’s closure, outbreaks of the Communist Party virus have been reported across China. During this sensitive period, Communist Party officials have ordered the media to downplay the outbreak and prohibit reporting on the anniversary of Wuhan’s closure, except for specified material, to prevent people from evoking memories of the city’s closure.
Over the past few days, the epidemic has emerged in several Chinese cities, with city closures, road closures, full lines for nucleic acid testing, supermarkets empty of food, doors welded shut in residential neighborhoods, large numbers of military vehicles stationed in the epidemic area, ambulances and epidemic prevention personnel in protective clothing entering the blockade, and other familiar scenes that rekindle memories of last year’s out-of-control closure of Wuhan.
But Chinese Communist Party officials want to play down these memories of the Chinese people. The Central News Agency (CNA) quoted sources as saying that the authorities did not want to “trigger too many flashbacks” and ordered that reports on the first anniversary of Wuhan’s closure “must be published according to regulations” because of the sensitive timing of the recent outbreak in Beijing and Hebei and the upcoming visit of World health Organization (WHO) experts to China to investigate the outbreak.
The New York Times also quoted a reporter from the official media as saying that a recent official “propaganda directive” explicitly banned reporting on issues related to the first anniversary of the outbreak.
Chinese journalists were also warned not to draw attention to the first anniversary of Wuhan’s closure on social media. Some journalists were forced to abandon plans to interview relatives of those who lost their lives in the epidemic.
Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was recently sentenced to four years in prison for reporting on the reality of Wuhan’s closure, demonstrates the attitude that Communist Party officials want to convey to the media.
In addition to the media, the Internet is also a key target of the Chinese Communist authorities. Officials recently deployed a team of “censors” to clean up critical reports of the outbreak on the Internet, with “first anniversary” and “whistle blower” becoming sensitive words that are often removed.
The CCP has tried to portray Wuhan as a city reborn to downplay the unforgettable grief and anger of its residents. The official documentary “Wuhan Day and Night” will be released on Jan. 22. But there are questions that the film will not be a true account of the outbreak in Wuhan.
Medical staff at a hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, treat a patient with Chinese Communist pneumonia (COVID-19) on March 19, 2020.
Medical staff wearing protective clothing walk past patients waiting to be treated in a hospital corridor at the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, China, Jan. 25, 2020.
Yao Qing, a Wuhan resident, told Free Asia, “How many more miserable people are there in Wuhan who cannot be hospitalized or treated for their illnesses? Who will report on these situations?
Yao Qing said, “These media reports are consciously leading to positive propaganda, but the credibility of such reports is doubtful.
Yao recounted her own experience during the Wuhan city closure: a friend with uremia was refused admission to a hospital for fear of contracting the Chinese Communist virus and died five days later; when the city was closed, she was unable to buy food and supplies and the neighborhood committee only helped her three times, forcing her to rely on a cabbage for a week. But none of these facts ever appeared in the official media.
He Qinglian, a scholar of Chinese economics and society who now lives in the United States, said that the media can make whatever kind of epidemic the Chinese Communist Party wants to report.
She cautioned, “You must take the Chinese media with a grain of salt or be good at analyzing (reported) news.
The Communist Party’s censorship of speech extends beyond the country to overseas. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who now lives in the United Kingdom, made the documentary film “Coronation”. The film chronicles migrant workers who were “kicked around” by the CCP bureaucracy during Wuhan’s closure, and Zhang Hai, who sued the Wuhan government for concealing the epidemic that led to his father’s death. These are the same stories of Wuhan’s closure that could not be screened in mainland China.
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