The Regret of Wuhan: How China Missed the Critical Window for Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak

Out of mountains of reports about the coronavirus epidemic, we at China Change have taken a keen interest in two areas: the origins of the virus, and the decision-making process. The cover story of China News Weekly (中国新闻周刊), published on February 5, put together a detailed timeline and asked the right questions. Within a day, the article was deleted from the magazine’s own website as well as major Chinese news portals.

Luckily, the report is preserved in various news aggregate sites outside China in both simplified and traditional Chinese (武汉之憾：黄金防控期是如何错过的？). The timeline it presented focuses on the discovery of early coronavirus cases, local government’s responses in the seven weeks from December 1 to January 20, what the local and national Center for Disease Control and Prevention did in that period, and without directly raising the question, how the most critical decisions, especially the decision to downplay the outbreak in the first weeks, were made at the State Council and ultimately by the Communist Party leaders in Zhongnanhai.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know much about the first case of the 2019-nConV. This is a translation of the censored article. We added notes at various points of the text to provide more details and context, and links are embedded for your easy reference. – The Editors ChinaChange.org

The Regret of Wuhan: How China Missed the Critical Window for Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak

By Li Xiangyu (李想俣), Li Mingzi (李明子), Peng Danni (彭丹妮), and Du Wei (杜玮), in the February 10 issue of China News Weekly

December 31, 2019 saw an announcement that interrupted the Chinese people’s joyous spirit as they prepared to usher in the new year. Circulating on social media sites was a red-letterhead document bearing the official seal of the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission (武汉市卫健委) and sounding an emergency notice: “Cases of a pneumonia of unknown cause have intermittently surfaced at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market.”…

Read the full translated article here on the China Change website

Hong Kong Is Showing Symptoms of a Failed State

With empty supermarket shelves and rising public distrust, the coronavirus-hit city is ticking most of the boxes.

Crowds are irrational everywhere, and social media hardly helps. Yet the palpable anxiety in coronavirus-hit Hong Kong these days suggests worrying levels of distrust in a city where citizens have always expected private enterprise at least, if not the state, to keep things ticking over. Both have failed miserably, preparing inadequately even after the SARS outbreak that killed almost 300 people in the city in 2003.

A fragile state is usually defined by its inability to protect citizens, to provide basic services and by questions over the legitimacy of its government. After an epidemic and months of poorly handled pro-democracy demonstrations, Hong Kong is ticking most of those boxes. Add in a strained judicial system, and the prognosis for its future as a financial hub looks poor.

A snapshot of the situation first. Hong Kong is not, at least for now, as grim as parts of mainland China, where the outbreak of novel coronavirus has people building barricades, or being followed around by drones. This isn’t Wuhan….

Read the full article on here on Bloomberg

The Same Sickness That Spread the Coronavirus Threatens to Bring Hong Kong to Ruin: the Chinese Communist Party

The core problem is that China, for all its high-tech gloss and high-speed trains, remains saddled with a communist-structured political system. However efficient this might look from afar, it is configured to promote repression, misery and ruinous error. Incentives are grossly skewed to promote the party line, never mind the realities. Inside mainland China, this is too often obscured by propaganda coupled with tight controls over any sign of dissent.
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https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/02/02/the-same-sickness-that-spread-the-coronavirus-threatens-to-bring-hong-kong-to-ruin-the-chinese-communist-party/?fbclid=IwAR3TO16UxVzsAR219BVflH-UDap1erZRPycqYODfBGQiiKLewchpUHkx4oo