2020:
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Chronological order rather than reversed chronological order
It should be clear that I am not in accord with the ideological aspects of the content of many of the articles I link to.
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Anti-China xenophobia intensifies with Coronavirus:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/hong-kong-virus-rekindles-animosities-china-200210041705903.html“Minnie Li has thrown herself into Hong Kong’s protest movement for the past few years, even joining a hunger strike last summer.
But these days the Shanghai native and university lecturer is greeted with flyers warning that mainland Chinese like her are not welcome – all in the name of shielding residents from potential coronavirus carriers from the mainland….”
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China’s online censors tighten grip after brief coronavirus respite:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health…/
“The period from Jan 19 to Feb 1, when public concern about the coronavirus exploded just as China was gearing up for the Lunar New Year holiday, saw an uncharacteristic loosening. Online buzz about the outbreak flourished, with netizens largely unfettered in criticizing local authorities – but not central government leaders – over their handling of the crisis.
That liberalisation has come to end, with censors in the past week shutting down WeChat groups and scrubbing social media posts, according to Chinese reporters. Authorities have also reprimanded tech firms that gave free rein to online speech.
“Xi Jinping has made it clear that he expects efforts to strengthen ‘the guidance of public opinion’ to be increased,” said Fergus Ryan, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) who studies Chinese social media. “
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China Arrested a Whistleblower Who Shot Viral Video of Coronavirus Corpses in Wuhan
Vice News, February 11, 2020
https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=abf54e5e31&e=ab66737ddaChina Detains, Harasses Journalist, Academics Over Reports, Comments on Coronavirus
Radio Free Asia, February 10, 2020
https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=0552c24dba&e=ab66737ddaSeven Detained in Tibet For ‘Spreading Rumors’ on the Coronavirus Threat
Radio Free Asia, February 10, 2020
https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=1d8451dfae&e=ab66737dda -
Beijing and Shanghai impose new controls on residents –
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article…?
“Measures unveiled by the authorities in Beijing and Shanghai on Monday include stricter controls on the movement of residents and vehicles, compulsory mask-wearing and shutting down leisure and other non-essential community services….Officials at the epidemic control and prevention centre in Shanghai said on Monday that “the vast majority” of the city’s 13,000 residential communities and compounds had instituted “lockdown management”, including entry restrictions and mandatory temperature checks….Most residents appear supportive of the restrictions amid widespread anxiety and fear over the spread of the deadly virus….with restrictions in place for the past two weeks, it felt like “living in a prison”….many others, who were apparently dissatisfied with the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and the disruption to their lives, complained about the sweeping restrictions and questioned their effectiveness….“What’s the point of such lockdown measures if we are still required to go back to the office to resume work, where we are vulnerable to infections and human transmissions,” a Weibo user commented on the social media site. A tenant in Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei province neighbouring Beijing, said that he was told by his landlord that he needed to submit a medical document for a pass to enter his compound. “But the problem is, I have to go to the hospital to get such document, but who wants to go to hospital at this moment?”” -
More:
“A woman who broke a quarantine order by going to her office in Kowloon and attending a meeting elsewhere in Hong Kong has slammed the anti-contagion measure as a “complete waste of time and resources”. Teenie Chau, who asked not to give her real name, had last been in mainland China on January 27 before returning to the city via Taiwan on Saturday, when the government’s tough new system against the spread of the deadly coronavirus took effect. Chau said she went out on Monday in a surgical mask while subject to a stay-at-home order for two weeks that she insisted she did not know at the time applied to her.”
Xi Jinping May Lose Control of the Coronavirus Story, Foreign Policy, February 10, 2020
Hong Kong Is Showing Symptoms of a Failed State
Bloomberg, February 8, 2020China’s rulers see the coronavirus as a chance to tighten their grip
The Economist, February 8, 2020Here’s How China Is Silencing Coronavirus Critics in the U.S.
Vice News, February 12, 2020Coronavirus “Rumor” Crackdown Continues With Censorship, Detentions
China Digital Times, February 12, 2020About 100 people protest in Hong Kong over plan to use Fo Tan public housing estate as quarantine site
South China Morning Post, February 12, 2020Why a coronavirus-fuelled revolution in China is unlikely, despite Western commentators’ fondest hopes
South China Morning Post, February 13, 2020 -
Xi had early knowledge of coronavirus severity –
” …a speech by President Xi Jinping that indicated the country’s leadership was aware of the potential gravity of the outbreak far before the Chinese public was informed.
In the early days of the epidemic, which has been one of the biggest political challenges of Xi’s tenure, the president seemed to play a muted role, partly fuelling criticism of the government’s approach to the outbreak. But during a speech Xi delivered February 3, which was published by state media on Saturday, he said he gave instructions on fighting the virus as early as January 7.
It was not until late January that officials said the virus could spread between humans and public alarm began to rise.
In the address, Xi said he ordered the shutdowns at the epicentre: “On January 22, in light of the epidemic’s rapid spread and the challenges of prevention and control, I made a clear request that Hubei province implement comprehensive and stringent controls over the outflow of people.” – http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/xi-early...
This surely makes my original hypothesis of a “conspiracy” ( ie let something terrible happen so as to give the state, threatened by potential subversion from below, the image of being the saviour ) increasingly likely…No need to look for secret information that it was grown deliberately in a lab when a totally verifiable conspiracy is hiding in plain sight.
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Three things the Chinese government tried to hide during the novel coronavirus outbreak: https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=61deb2e978&e=ab66737dda
Quartz, February 13, 2020
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Some increasing evidence that it may have come from a lab:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0gww2yznI
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Emergency Notice from Zhangwan District on Implementing Districtwide Wartime Management and Control:
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Why a Chinese virology lab is unable to quell the coronavirus conspiracy theories around it:
https://qz.com/1805422/wuhan-virology-lab-unable-to-quell-china-coronavirus-conspiracies/
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Acrostic poem about Cornoavirus causes problems:
Acrostic: a poem, in which particular letters,usually the first letters of each line, spell a word, phrase or sentence.
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Leaked report reveals Carrie Lam proposed to Beijing to use coronavirus outbreak as opportunity to help pro-establishment camp win September LegCo elections
Apple Daily, February 22, 2020
港《蘋果》密件揭林鄭向北京獻計 藉抗疫令建制選情轉危為機
香港《蘋果》指林鄭向北京呈報告 賴暴亂、醫護罷工阻抗疫 篤建制派、行會成員背脊 (In leaked report to Beijing, Carrie Lam blames protests for failures in anti-outbreak policies; accuses pro-establishment camp for abandoning her; orders Hospital Authority to fire medical staff who took part in strike; and says outbreak in Hong Kong is “precious chance for U-turn for September elections”)
Stand News, February 22, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=115e8226ec&e=ab66737dda李立峯：社會運動下的抗疫和抗疫下的社會運動 (Combatting viral outbreak amid a social movement, and undergoing a social movement in a viral outbreak)
Ming Pao, February 20, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=eb5d675f1c&e=ab66737dda -
As Wuhan’s desperate and sick beg for help, China shuts them down – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=46cde36781&e=ab66737dda
– The Guardian, February 17, 2020“An anonymous Chinese writer living in North America describes how the CPC’s censorship model has contributed to the spread of the Coronavirus, as the state prioritizes its own interests over those of its citizens:
“In mid-January, a nurse told me that medical workers in Wuhan had been advised to not wear protective gear to avoid causing panic. Later, Song told me that medical workers had been advised not to appeal for help on public media outlets. Now 1,700 medical workers nationwide have been infected.”
Those who report or take photos of the situation in Wuhan are forced into what the authorities call “compulsory quarantine” and kept incommunicado for up to 40 days:
说了真话 新华社的天塌了？(Xinhua commentary on doctors’ fear of speaking the truth in virus outbreak taken down hours after it is posted)
Deutsche Welle, February 23, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=5938d12a88&e=ab66737dda真实的武汉在哪里？”暖新闻”是这样吞噬真实的声音 (Where is the real Wuhan? How “warm news” swallows up voices of truth)
Radio Free Asia, February 21, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=32cf3b19f0&e=ab66737ddaChinese censorship demonstrates it can afford the cost of ‘the death of media’
Global Voices, February 21, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=afd05525bd&e=ab66737dda敏感詞管制嚴苛 網課直播屢遭禁 (During virus outbreak, online homework and livestreamed classes are blocked by China’s firewall) – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=466a6334fd&e=ab66737dda
Chinese bureaucracy finds a use abroad for Twitter, a medium it fears at home – ie using it to praise the state’s power to protect people from the virus that they’d allowed to spread for 2 weeks in January before they turned the ‘crisis’ to their advantage (but, of course, suppressing any independent use of it in China itself):
https://headtopics.com/us/china-finds-a-use-abroad-for-twitter-a-medium-it-fears-at-home-11474006
Hong Kong’s low-income families struggling to afford masks and disinfectant, new study claims
South China Morning Post, February 23, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=366a2b439d&e=ab66737ddaProtests over Yuen Long feature beer, champagne as some celebrate Hong Kong police officer’s coronavirus infection
South China Morning Post, February 21, 2020 – https://hrichina.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=be71fffd3e2fea33689a7d0d8&id=73a353a7d7&e=ab66737dda -
China Detains Activist Who Accused Xi of Coronavirus Cover-Up
He was tracked down using facial recognition cameras:
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Coronavirus: single mother uses same mask for five days as grass roots priced out of Hong Kong’s frantic panic buying or too weak to queue overnight –
(report 5/2/20)
Some reports say masks cost 5 euros each, and only last 4 hours…
The cheaper ones are medically useless but socially useful.
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China, apparenly in order to Stop Coronavirus, Turns Neighbor Against Neighbor: The authorities hunt for people from Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, encouraging citizens to inform on others. Even those without symptoms are being ostracized.
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The wonders of quarantined life:
“…social media is still awash with entertaining videos…Xinhua, China’s official news agency, has found its own protagonists of this blitz spirit, such as the crying guard who sits on the ground eating his lunch but jumps up seconds later “when duty calls”, or an Egyptian family who “chose” to stay in Wuhan. A series of star-filled songs about the outbreak have added to the culture of positivity and patriotism. Jackie Chan sings on both Wuhan, are you OK? and Believe Love Will Triumph…The truth is that most people are not interested in being controversial, and are just trying to pass the time and are happy for a morale boost.Yesterday, a friend urged me not to ask too many questions about coronavirus on WeChat, as it has become “too sensitive””
Why worry about socialising being banned? Virtual socialising is marvellous, particularly when you avoid sensitive questions: separation perfected…
The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to “social” media, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that no longer even engender “lonely crowds” because even a lonely crowd can begin to overcome its loneliness, can overcome the absence of community that the culture of positivity and patriotism ensures, and spread the virus that hierarchical power fears the most: the virus of subversion. The ideal of the spectacle is everybody indoors unless the necessities of wage labour force them to ‘meet’ – where their ‘communication’ is under the constant supervision of their bosses. With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness.“With at least two prominent citizen journalists — Chen Qiushi and Fang Bing — ‘disappeared’ or otherwise silenced after they posted grim accounts and video clips of hospitals struggling to cope with the onrush of suspected coronavirus patients, the party is now taking charge of the story, ordering only “positive” coverage from state journalists already trained to sing its praises.
“[We must] step up strategic content planning and innovation … promote positive energy and foster a climate of public opinion that is conducive to waging an all-out people’s war on the epidemic,” the directive said.
“We must project the positive image of the commission’s police, grid operatives and other rank-and-file members of the mass surveillance team in the new era,” it said.
“We get our orders and we move out, fearing no hardship, only selfless dedication,” the directive said.
It requires all Communist Party political and legal affairs committees at regional and provincial level to implement the new propaganda requirements, as well as cracking down on “illegal and criminal acts that hinder epidemic prevention and control work.”
Propaganda work should include “moving stories about the noble deeds of … staunch defenders against the epidemic,” it said, calling for more human interest stories and emotional episodes to paint “a vivid picture of loyalty, selflessness, dedication, singing and tears.” -
Interesting detailed radical text ( I have minor qualms about what could be interpreted as some nostalgia for welfare state capitalism, but it’s not explicit and is not in any way the main aspect of this text):
http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/
Some excerpts:
“Wuhan…now plagued by overproduction and forced into a contentious new round of downsizing, privatization and general restructuring—itself resulting in several large strikes and protests in the last five years. The city is essentially the construction capital of China, which means it has played a particularly important role in the period after the global economic crisis, since these were the years in which Chinese growth was buoyed by the funneling of investment funds into infrastructure and real estate projects. Wuhan not only fed this bubble with its oversupply of building materials and civil engineers but also, in so doing, became a real estate boomtown of its own. According to our own calculations, in 2018-2019 the total area dedicated to construction sites in Wuhan was equivalent to the size of Hong Kong island as a whole……the once-bustling city has been sealed off for over a month, its streets emptied by government mandate: “The greatest contribution you can make is: don’t gather together, don’t cause chaos,” read a headline in the Guangming Daily, run by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department…
…the fact is that, despite the government’s call to isolate oneself, people may soon be forced to “gather together” to tend to the needs of production…
…Now is not the time for a simple “Scooby-Doo Marxist” exercise of pulling the mask off the villain to reveal that, yes, indeed, it was capitalism that caused coronavirus all along! That would be no more subtle than foreign commentators sniffing about for regime change. Of course capitalism is culpable—but how, exactly, does the social-economic sphere interface with the biological, and what kind of deeper lessons might be drawn from the entire experience?
… we’ll explore both… how capitalist accumulation produces such plagues, but also how the moment of pandemic is itself a contradictory instance of political crisis, making visible to people the unseen potentials and dependencies of the world around them, while also offering yet another excuse for the extension of systems of control even further into everyday life…… the evolutionary pressure cooker of capitalist agriculture and urbanization… provides the ideal medium through which ever-more-devastating plagues are born, transformed, induced to zoonotic leaps, and then aggressively vectored through the human population. To this is added similarly intensive processes occurring at the economy’s fringes, where “wild” strains are encountered by people pushed to ever-more extensive agroeconomic incursions into local ecosystems…
…Growing genetic monocultures of domestic animals removes whatever immune firebreaks may be available to slow down transmission. Larger population sizes and densities facilitate greater rates of transmission. Such crowded conditions depress immune response. High throughput, a part of any industrial production, provides a continually renewed supply of susceptibles, the fuel for the evolution of virulence…
…If we instead look to England, where capitalism arose first in the countryside via the mass clearing of peasants from the land to be replaced by monocultures of livestock, we see the earliest examples of these distinctively capitalist plagues. Three different pandemics occurred in 18th century England, spanning 1709-1720, 1742-1760, and 1768-1786. The origin of each was imported cattle from Europe, infected by the normal pre-capitalist pandemics that followed bouts of warfare. But in England, cattle had begun to be concentrated in new ways, and the introduction of the infected stock would therefore rip through the population much more aggressively than it had in Europe….
… prior to circulation enhancing the resilience of such diseases, the basic logic of capital helps to take previously isolated or harmless viral strains and place them in hyper-competitive environments that favor the specific traits which cause epidemics, such as rapid viral lifecycles, the capacity for zoonotic jumping between carrier species, and the capacity to quickly evolve new transmission vectors…
COVID-19 can’t be understood without taking into account the ways in which China’s last few decades of development in and through the global capitalist system has molded the country’s health care system and the state of public health more generally. The epidemic, however novel, is therefore similar to other public health crises that came before it, which tend to be produced with nearly the same regularity as economic crises, and to be regarded in similar ways within the popular press—as if they were random, “black swan” events, utterly unpredictable and unprecedented. The reality, however, is that these health crises follow their own chaotic, cyclical patterns of recurrence, made more probable by a series of structural contradictions built into the nature of production and proletarian life under capitalism. Much like the case of the Spanish Flu, the coronavirus was originally able to take hold and spread rapidly because of a general degradation of basic healthcare among the population at large. But precisely because this degradation has taken place in the midst of spectacular economic growth, it has been obscured behind the splendor of glittering cities and massive factories. The reality, however, is that expenditures on public goods like health care and education in China remain extremely low, while most public spending has been directed toward brick and mortar infrastructure—bridges, roads, and cheap electricity for production…”
…and so it continues – examining, amongst other things, the miserable absence of access to health care amongst China’s hundreds of millions of migrant workers, and how “Spanish Influenza” and Ebola developed .
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武汉肺炎”养老院11长者死 官方威胁造谣可囚7年 (Caixin News reports 11 dead in elderly home, authorities threaten 7-year imprisonment for spreading rumors)
Radio Free Asia, February 25, 2020 –武汉肺炎治疗”免费”吗？ 疫情暴露出中国卫生投入的短板 (Is treatment for coronavirus free? The shortcomings of China’s healthcare)
Radio Free Asia, February 25, 2020 –醫管局向罷工醫護發信 稱考慮下一步跟進 「繼續支付工資，但不表示放棄追究權利」(Hong Kong Hospital Authority issues letter to medics who took part in strike and threatens follow-up action)
Stand News, February 26, 2020 –Xi warned officials that efforts to stop virus could hurt economy: sources
Reuters, February 11, 2020 –Hong Kong Tightens Border as Medical Workers Call for Shutdown
The New York Times, February 3, 2020Coronavirus: top Hong Kong medical school chief questions government response to health crisis
South China Morning Post, February 4, 2020 –逃兵還是抗爭者？罷工香港醫護到底在爭取什麼 (Fighters or deserters? What Hong Kong’s medical workers want from strike)
The Initium, February 3, 2020 –醫管局稱約 4400 醫護罷工 包括 360 醫生 2500 護士 強調和員工睇法一致 (Hospital Authority announces 4,400 medical workers absent from duty in second wave of strikes)
Stand News, February 4, 2020 –Coronavirus: Hong Kong faces escalated medical strike despite government move to expand border closures
South China Morning Post, February 3, 2020Dissident artist receives repeated death threats after calling for movement not to resume work amidst outbreak –
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/dear-chairman-xi-its-time-you-go
https://www.hrichina.org/en/press-work/hric-comment/xi-jinping-culprit-wuhan-epidemic
Coronavirus Weakens China’s Powerful Propaganda Machine –
“Beijing is tapping its old propaganda playbook as it battles the relentless coronavirus outbreak, the biggest challenge to its legitimacy in decades. State media is filling smartphones and airwaves with images and tales of unity and sacrifice aimed at uniting the people behind Beijing’s rule. It even briefly offered up cartoon mascots named Jiangshan Jiao and Hongqi Man, characters meant to stir patriotic feelings among the young during the crisis.“The problem for China’s leaders: This time, it isn’t working so well.
“Online, people are openly criticizing state media. They have harshly condemned stories of individual sacrifice when front-line medical personnel still lack basic supplies like masks. They shouted down Jiangshan Jiao and Hongqi Man. They have heaped scorn on images of the women with shaved heads, asking whether the women were pressured to do it and wondering why similar images of men weren’t appearing.” –
Uighur activists say China’s coronavirus measures are causing widespread hunger
Agence France-Presse, February 27, 2020 –Coronavirus: China tries to contain outbreak of freedom of speech, closing critics’ WeChat accounts
South China Morning Post, February 26, 2020 –肺炎疫情繼續蔓延 中國官民網絡博弈成拉鋸戰 (As coronavirus spreads in China, online fight between government and the people becomes tug-o-war)
BBC, February 24, 2020 –消息指瑪嘉烈醫院部門主管拒交罷工醫護名單 辭職轉任顧問醫生 院方不評論 (Head of radiology at Prince Margaret Hospital refuses to submit list of doctors who joined strike to Hospital Authority, quits as a result)
The Stand News, February 27, 2020 –Coronavirus: Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority targets medics who went on strike to urge border closure
Hong Kong Free Press, February 27, 2020 –
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