The Chinese government has used the pandemic to accumulate more and more power. The result is a totalitarian and anti-scientific humanitarian catastrophe.
In one week last December, five members of Guanya Yao’s circle of relatives in Beijing were killed, in addition to his father, stepfather and grandmother. In an interview with a reporter, Guan, who lives in California, gave the impression of helplessness and discouragement. Reasons anyone in China understands: he chose his words carefully. Avoiding directly mentioning the Chinese government, he referred only to an ambiguous “they. “”It’s hard to understand,” Guan said, “why they lifted all restrictions. “
If you look at official Chinese government documents, the deaths of Guan’s five relatives have nothing to do with covid. They may have become inflamed with covid, but government regulations, regulations that cannot be made public and may not be questioned: the required doctors who take into account the death certificate to propose the reasons for choosing death. Guan’s uncle died of Parkinson’s disease, his grandmother died of kidney failure.
Meanwhile, not a single citizen of China, a country of 1. 3 billion people, has officially died from covid. A coronavirus tsunami flooded towns and villages, leaving piles of corpses in morgues; Crematoria that operate day and night may simply not meet the demand. But to achieve its achievements in the battle against covid, the Chinese government insisted for almost two weeks on claiming that no one had died from covid.
This is not new. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the Chinese government has assiduously monitored mortality figures in the same way that an unfaithful husband interviewed through his wife first denies everything. Then, when he can no longer continue his denials, he tries to restrain the damage. “Uh, okay, but only once or twice. “
No wife ever believes such lies; Neither do the Chinese people. Supporters of the Chinese Communist Party tend to stick to a cautious line. An entrepreneur friend is an example of this. ” The government’s figures aren’t necessarily accurate, but you have to look on the bright side. ” he told me. ” They did it for us. “
It’s not like you have to worry about the Chinese government. It is not suffering from a crisis of confidence. China has hordes of police, uniformed and in plain clothes, with a wonderful ability to turn other people into government. A secret policeman once told me directly, “You don’t, but what are you going to do?”
My entrepreneur friend is not alone. In China, government-controlled media and underground propaganda agents spare no effort to sing the praises of pandemic prevention policies: “Thank you, President Xi!Thank you to the Communist Party!” Our policy has the approval of others and will resist the control of history. “”The state has been with us for 3 years. The government did its best!
Outside of China, some Western observers use the syntax “although. . . “still. . . However, to express your own general support: although Xi’s policies would possibly have seemed a bit extreme, the projects described through the People’s Daily as correct, clinical and effective have not only reduced the transmission of the virus, but also reduced the death rate well below that of other countries. . .
I disagree. In my opinion, Xi Jinping’s measures have very little to do with public health. They were a master class in dictatorship with an underlying theme of “how to improve society after a disaster. “The number one purpose is not to protect people’s lives and health. , but to shield and expand its force as much as possible. Totalitarian pandemic prevention policies have no apparent effectiveness other than wreaking havoc on a lot of millions of people. Such policies deserve no praise. They are at the origin of an anti-scientific humanitarian catastrophe.
Before December 7, 2022, Xi’s government pushed a “zero covid” policy. It’s as benign as it sounds. Essentially, this is a crusade of mass incarceration. In my e-book Deadly Quiet City: True Stories from Wuhan, I tell the story of how the Chinese government turned Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, into a large and depressing prison.
Then Xi clearly realized that the measures against the pandemic brought him benefits. He stubbornly expanded politics to encircle the entire country. In many places, a positive bachelor case or, infrequently, not a positive single case has resulted in the total closure of a community. or even an entire city, cutting maritime links, closing department stores and confining citizens to layers of fences topped with barbed wire. No one can simply leave their home, even to exercise their highest fundamental rights: the right to food. and the right to see a doctor.
This is how the Chinese government has accumulated more and more power. No warrant is required to break into residences. Thousands and tens of thousands of others can be forced into solitary confinement at any time, transported to concentration camp-like facilities with inadequate food and eating. Quite a lack of privacy. If someone is brave enough to resist, a succession of punishments rains down relentlessly: police, government officials and so-called volunteers, in white PPE, do not want permission to surround and kick and beat their victim, who is then dragged to criminal or publicly humiliated.
An infamous photograph from November 17, 2022 shows two young women who were beaten and humiliated after allegedly refusing to cooperate with pandemic prevention agents: a begging stomach, bound hand and foot; the other, with his hands tied, forced to kneel.
The sanctions were not limited to the alleged perpetrators. Entire families were dragged into the maelstrom. In Shanghai in May 2022, police threatened a young man who expressed mild objections: “Your punishment will be for 3 generations!The other young people replied loud and clear: “We are the last generation, thank you very much!
China’s pandemic prevention policies have resulted in countless deaths and tragedies: elderly people with health problems who commit suicide because they may simply not receive medical care; other young people who jump out of construction because they can’t make a living; Unborn young children who die in their mother’s womb while she awaits treatment. When a chimney burst in an apartment construction in the western city of Urumqi on November 24, 2022, the pandemic prevention policy of turning residential spaces into prisons prevented access to the chimney trucks. Residents struggled to escape the inferno. Ten were killed and many more were injured.
Two weeks later, on December 7, the government made an unforeseen 180-degree turn. No more citywide lockdowns, no more forced PCR testing. In fact, there are no effective mitigation measures. He was like a flood officer opening the floodgates and the state on the heights to watch coldly as the raging torrent swept through towns and villages.
In the days that followed, countless people died, in addition to academics, journalists, film directors, celebrities, and even senior communist officials and renowned army officers. The maximum fundamental analgesics. All hospitals overcrowded. Doctors and nurses — some getting fired up — endured the whining and whining of patients as they filled out a cascade of death certificates.
There have been so many deaths that cremation fees have doubled and tripled. His circle of relatives spent 30,000 yuan (about $4,300) on his father’s cremation. Her grandmother had to wait 10 days for cremation. Hospitals and morgues were filled with bodies. In many cities, local governments have taken over freezers in seafood and meat garages to engage the flood of corpses.
And then there are the remote townships and villages that, on a map of China, are like a small fold in the Mariana Pit where there are no lamps and where the kindness of the party never comes. According to surveys of citizen journalists, many rural villages delight in widespread infections but have virtually no drugs. Poor farmers push themselves like their Stone Age ancestors to find herbal remedies. Some have never heard of the coronavirus or the Omicron subvariant and have no idea how to treat them. broth made with pears can suppress cough; that’s all they have to fight the virus, and in some remote villages, the elderly struggle to shake the leaves and flowers of Japan’s medlars in the confidence that they will save their lives.
However, the endless tide of death and suffering so far has not been enough to convince Xi’s government that mistakes have been made. In fact, party officials organize giant celebrations and publish volumes of self-indulgent articles. They know that in an autocratic society, fact is what you say it is.
Four months ago, Xi broke with the conference and fulfilled his wish for a third term. Soon, like Chairman Mao Zedong, he would become emperor for life. Over the past 10 years and especially in the last 3 years of Covid, this overconfidence (Xi has more than a hundred books under his belt) and the leader has fully demonstrated his ability to make other people suffer. In the future, how much suffering will China and the world at large experience?
To ring in the new year, Xi appeared on TV dressed in a dark blue suit and red tie. He smiled wryly and uttered a word he might not believe in himself: “We have insisted on the primacy of others and their lives. . . “
A few days later, the Chinese government began a new round of negotiations with Pfizer. For the past three years, the Chinese government has refused to import effective vaccines and remedies for Western coronaviruses while aggressively pushing domestic vaccines and selling herbal concoctions.
This most recent negotiating circular, which in many cases was just to show, did not fail hastily as the Chinese government said Paxlovid was too expensive. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla responded, “They have the largest economy in the world right now, and I don’t think it deserves to pay less than El Salvador. “
A friend of mine had an attractive point of view: “This is not the value of the Pfizer drug. “For the Chinese government, “our lives are not worth the money. “
Murong Xuecun is one of China’s most prominent recent authors. His paintings include The Missing Ingredient, Leave Me Alone, Dancing Through Red Dust and Deadly Quiet City: True Stories from Wuhan. He wrote an op-ed for The New York Times from 2011 to 2016. . Live in Australia