Yuan Longping, the “father of hybrid rice” as propagated by the Chinese Communist Party, died on May 22. The party media CGTN reported his death at 10 a.m., but was quickly “debunked” by officials, and then Xinhua News Agency announced his death at 1 p.m. Netizens have speculated that his “return to life after death” was politically motivated, ridiculing his death in the morning “without the approval of the organization”.
At around 10 a.m. Beijing time on the 22nd, China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of the Communist Party’s CCTV, posted a message on its official microblog saying, “Yuan Longping passed away in Changsha on the morning of May 22, 2021 Beijing time at the age of 91 after his medical treatment failed. An English version of the message was also released.
At around 11:00, the Propaganda Department of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the secretariat of academician Yuan Longping came out to “dispel” the rumors, saying that the rumors of “Yuan Longping’s death” were false and that Yuan was “receiving treatment in the hospital. “CGTN then immediately deleted the post “Yuan Longping died of illness” and said it was “sorry for the carelessness of the previous report”.
In the afternoon, Xinhua News Agency announced that Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure at 1:07 p.m. on the 22nd at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha, Hunan Province. The news was quoted by the Punch News as saying that Yuan fell and was admitted to hospital on March 10 while visiting Hainan to inspect research, and was later transferred to Changsha Hospital in Hunan Province, where he died on the 22nd.
In response to CGTN’s “misreporting of Yuan’s death”, some mainland media accused the reporter of “news grabbing”. However, many netizens believe that “misreporting” by the party media is unlikely, and the real reason is that “no one can die without the approval of the party”.
Some commentators analyzed that the Chinese Communist Party authorities were preparing a huge “show of sadness” for Yuan’s death, including a “send-off in the rain” in the afternoon, but CGTN was caught off guard by the unauthorized disclosure of the death news, so they ordered “The official announcement of Yuan’s death will be made after the preparations are ready.
According to party media reports, at about 4 p.m. that day, the funeral vehicle containing Yuan’s body, pulled out from the underground garage of Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. On both sides of the driveway, “crowded with people who came to pay their respects” and ran after the funeral car. Although it had just rained and the ground was wet, a large number of flowers were placed in the hospital and “many young ’90s’ and ’00s’ were reluctant to leave the scene for a long time”.
At the same time, the party media began to make a big push to incite emotion.
Yuan was one of the pioneers of hybrid rice in China, and the Chinese Communist Party has been claiming that he “solved the problem of feeding the Chinese people. However, many people on the Internet have criticized Yuan’s contribution as not that great, and that he is only an official “hero” who is being used to create a false public opinion that “the Party has fed the people”. In fact, many experts who have made significant contributions to China’s rice industry have been ignored by the CCP in order to create a “glorious image” of Yuan Longping.
Other netizens have pointed out that “it is not the scientists, but the countless entrepreneurs in the market economy that make global transactions possible… As long as the market is open and entrepreneurs are free to act, everyone will have food to eat.
The official microblogging service has shut down some of the microblogging accounts that insulted the “heroic figures of merit”, according to the official news of Yuan Longping’s death on the 22nd.
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