The World Must Not Mimic China's Authoritarian Model to Fight COVID-19

[EasyAce]

Its rulers tried to cover up an epidemic, then declared war on their people to control it.
By Shikha Dalmia
https://reason.com/2020/03/30/the-world-must-not-mimic-chinas-authoritarian-model-to-fight-covid-19/

. . . China's talking points now seem to have gone international, if the headlines about its allegedly stellar success in fighting the coronavirus are any indication. The World Health Organization went on a "fact-finding trip" to the country and came back congratulating it on its "unique and unprecedented public health response." Yale University's Nicholas Christakis has

dubbed Chinese autocrats' ability to restrict the movement of hundreds of millions of people "deeply impressive." He added that China's "collectivist culture and . . . authoritarian government" had "allowed this enormous, widespread response." (The Uighurs might have a different point of view.) The New York Times' Donald McNeil has praised China's "enormous success in beating down its epidemic" compared to America's sluggish response.

But China might not be revealing the full human cost of its totalitarian tactics.

It is clear now that authorities in Wuhan, the town of 11 million where the disease originally broke out, kept denying that human-to-human transmission was happening even after 739 people, including 419 medical staff, had become infected (a claim that the World Health Organization, to its eternal shame, endorsed until mid-January). They closed the live animal market where the disease had originated—without any notice or explanation to the perplexed vendors—and called it a day. The doctor who raised an alarm and tried to warn his international colleagues was booked for "severely disturbing the social order" and put under house arrest. (He died in February from the virus.) The scientists who proved this was a new and serious disease were forced to destroy their samples and branded "rumormongers." If researchers in other countries had been allowed access to those samples, we might be closer to a cure or a vaccine by now. All of this allowed the disease to spread freely for almost two months in China and beyond.

Had the Chinese authorities been open even three weeks sooner, a study by U.K's University of Southampton assessed, the number of corornavirus cases could have been reduced by 95 percent and the world may well have been spared a pandemic. Why didn't they do so? It's not because they wanted to infect the world, as conspiracy theorists are claiming; it's not because they have strange culinary habits, as xenophobes are nattering. It's because the country's closed system blocked the flow of information and thwarted the spontaneous alarm systems that open societies have . . .

. . . This experience will be a lesson for future administrations. But China, unlike America, has a long history of epidemics and yet seems to have learned no lessons at all. Some of the most devastating flu pandemics of the 20th century—such as the Asian flu of 1957, which killed 1.1 million people worldwide and 116,000 in the U.S.—originated in China. More recently, China generated the bird flu and SARS. Yet its first instinct is to shoot the messenger, given that it imprisoned the doctor who raised the alarm during SARS too.

Why do the Chinese rulers keep making the same mistake over and over again? Because authoritarian regimes care about the survival of their people only to the extent that it ensures their own survival. Opening channels for the hoi polloi to communicate creates too many dangerous possibilities for subversion. But the absence of these channels also means that China's autocracy can use ruthless measures to combat the crisis without fearing public criticism—let alone a revolt—when it so chooses . . .