The year 2020 in China began with Wuhan police arraigning Dr. Li Wenliang and CCTV reporting on eight rumor-mongers, and ended with the first instance trial of Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist who ran to Wuhan at the beginning of the epidemic, who was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in Pudong New Area, Shanghai. What does this tell us? It shows that the Beijing authorities are still covering up the facts and the truth about the Wuhan epidemic, a serious public health incident that has seriously endangered China and the world, and are doing so by depriving citizens of their right to freedom of expression, and that punishment by words has become a central part of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to maintain stability.
Between Li Wenliang and Zhang Zhan, there are many other names of citizens, including Ren Zhiqiang, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison, Xu Zhangrun, who was prostituted, Xu Zhiyong and Geng Xiaonan, who are awaiting trial, and Fang Fang, Cai Xia, and Liang Yanping, who were criticized in a Cultural Revolution-style manner. They are all truth-tellers who exposed the truth about the Wuhan outbreak, accused the authorities of deliberately concealing it, missing the best prevention period, causing a worldwide pandemic, and demanded that the authorities be held accountable. These Chinese people have gained increasing attention and respect from the world for their courage and commitment, but most of them have become prisoners of the Chinese Communist Party, and many more are considered enemies by the authorities for their solidarity, and are either imprisoned or under close surveillance.
Of course, Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is well aware of the magnitude of the Wuhan epidemic, which has caused a complete economic collapse in China and the world, infected more than 82 million people and killed nearly 1.8 million, and is set to spill over into 2021. In a call with Putin on December 28, he said that the Newcastle pneumonia pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge to the safety of human life and a serious shock to the world economy, and that the world was entering a period of turbulent change. If this is not acknowledged, he will have nothing to say to the world, including the formal signing of the China-EU investment agreement on December 30, which took seven years of difficult negotiations, and the video summit Xi held with the EU top brass.
In the coming year 2020, two of the world’s leading journalist organizations, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, released their rankings of persecution of journalists, with China taking the double top spot. Another international organization, Freedom House, ranked China lowest out of 65 countries for the sixth year in a row in its Freedom on the Net 2020 report. Sarah Cooke, director of research on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House, has published an article on the year 2021. Cook posted five predictions for Beijing’s infringement of online freedom in 2021: increased censorship and surveillance of the COVID-19 vaccine and outbreak remain at the heart of online freedom restrictions; continued punishment of outspoken political and economic elites; the expansion of nationalist voices; stricter restraints on tech giants; and more big data surveillance and its use in political persecution.
This is reminiscent of Xu Zhangrun, who is being ambushed from nine cameras and eight sides; of Internet mogul Jack Ma, who is falling from the altar of China’s richest man. The Chinese regulator’s rebuke to Jack Ma that “the Internet industry is not a place outside of anti-monopoly law” is not only laughable, but the suggestion that Jack Ma has a monopoly on the Internet only proves that the Chinese Communist Party is shifting its management of the Internet from focusing on censoring content to further nationalizing all platforms of Internet commerce.
Is there a bigger monopoly than politics?
All of Xi Jinping’s speeches since he came to power have emphasized the Party’s leadership, and with the Party’s leadership, where is Jack Ma’s monopoly? He only opened up some space for the private economy, made a fortune and expanded private capital. Now everything has to become a floating cloud. A well-written tweet: “China is the only country in the world where the government has a monopoly on selling almost all the necessities of life: land + housing, water, electricity, oil and gas + roads, schools + hospitals, banks + insurance, telephone + power grid. Therefore China has become the absolute number one country in the world with the highest housing prices, highest water prices, highest electricity prices, highest road and bridge tolls, highest tuition fees, highest medical fees, highest phone bills, highest internet access fees, and highest fees of all kinds!” Network commerce nationalized, surely the price of online shopping must also rocket up.
The first of these is the “new era of Chinese socialism”, which is a new era of Chinese socialism. He was the only one in the room who did not wear a mask and made “comments” on the speeches, speaking the word “politics” 32 times in one breath. With 100 years of the Party and the 20th Communist Party Congress just around the corner, is there a bigger monopoly than “politics” in China?
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