Zhang Zhan sentenced to 4 years as Beijing reasserts official narrative of outbreak handling
www.ft.com
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of
FT.com T&Cs and
Copyright Policy. Email
licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be
found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/79ab1413-6eb9-49b5-a34a-36bc257c07cd
hinese citizen journalist jailed after accusing officials of Covid cover-up Zhang Zhan sentenced to 4 years as Beijing reasserts official narrative of outbreak handling Zhang Zhan was detained in May after she posted videos taken in Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first reported © YouTube/AFP via Getty Images Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save Christian Shepherd in Beijing and Tom Mitchell in Singapore DECEMBER 28 2020 257 Print this page Be the first to know about every new Coronavirus story Get alerts A Chinese citizen journalist who accused Wuhan authorities of a cover-up in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic has been sentenced to four years in jail, as Beijing asserts its official narrative that it successfully managed the outbreak. Zhang Zhan, a lawyer turned activist and independent blogger, was detained in May after she posted dozens of videos taken in the central Chinese city where the virus was discovered in December 2019. Zhang, 37, was sentenced on Monday by a Shanghai court for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a common charge for activists deemed to have undermined China’s social stability, according to Zhang Keke, one of her lawyers. The Chinese government has sought to downplay its early mishandling to the virus in favour of emphasising its later successes smothering transmission. China has enjoyed a sharp economic recovery after largely controlling the outbreak, even as much of the world battles rising case numbers and remains mired in economic doldrums. Citizen journalists and independent media outlets reported chaotic scenes in Wuhan during the first weeks of the outbreak, with internet censors and government propagandists overwhelmed by the outcry. Public anger peaked in early February when Chinese social media was filled with tributes to Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor who was reprimanded by police after raising awareness of the then unknown disease before he died from it. Police attempt to stop journalists from reporting outside the Shanghai court where Zhang Zhan was sentenced on Monday © AFP via Getty Images But the official narrative was quickly reasserted. As well as Zhang, at least three other citizen journalists — Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua — were detained after posting critical reports about the government’s response and are still awaiting trial. Even accounts from more moderate voices, such as Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang, who kept a popular online diary of daily life in the city, have faced censorship and attacks from conservative nationalists. Zhang posted clips of interviews and commentary on Chinese social media sites, documenting repeated failures by authorities in Wuhan over three months. She also posted on Twitter and YouTube, US platforms that are blocked in China. She spoke with struggling local business owners and met families facing pressure from police to keep quiet about their lost loved ones. In her last video on May 13, she accused the government of “violating human rights” in failing to protect the livelihoods of workers in the city. Mr Zhang, the lawyer, posted the verdict on Twitter and said his client had barely spoken in court other than to assert that a citizen’s speech should not be censored. He added that Zhang arrived at the hearing in a wheelchair. Zhang has repeatedly staged hunger strikes to protest the charges against her, according to accounts from her lawyers. Recommended FT SeriesCoronavirus: Could the world have been spared? China and Covid-19: what went wrong in Wuhan? The onset of winter has drawn warnings from Chinese officials of the need to prevent potential relapses of coronavirus cases with strict local lockdowns and mass testing after a handful of locally transmitted infections were discovered. The National Health Commission on Monday reported 21 new symptomatic infections, 15 of which were imported by people returning from abroad and six in north-east Liaoning province. In Beijing, the discovery of 10 cases in the capital’s Shunyi district sparked local authorities to declare “wartime” measures and carry out hundreds of thousands of swab tests. Dozens of human rights lawyers and activists who openly pushed for greater government accountability and protections of civil liberties have been jailed since Xi Jinping became China’s president in 2012. Chinese courts regularly leave cases deemed sensitive to the final weeks of the year during the holiday period, a time when many western diplomats and journalists are on holiday.
James Kynge in Hong Kong,
Sun Yu in Beijing and
Tom Hancock in Wuhan
FEBRUARY 6 2020
200Print this page
Be the first to know about every new Coronavirus story
Get alerts
On January 18, roughly six weeks after China’s deadly
coronavirus started to spread in Wuhan, the city’s Baibuting district was preparing for its annual mass banquet. On the 20th anniversary of the event, the organisers would be attempting to break a world record for the largest number of dishes served.
Long tables in 10 locations were laid out with a total of 13,986 dishes, some bearing patriotic names such as Motherland in My Heart (cucumber and ham), and One Belt One Road (vegetable salad). The platters were prepared by members of some 40,000 families, according to media reports, with many of them showing up to eat the food and smile for the cameras.
Despite those happy scenes, the Baibuting banquets now stand as a symbol of China’s mishandling of a viral outbreak that has killed 565 and infected more than 28,000, and spread to at least 27 countries and territories.
The district is now facing a rising toll of infected citizens. Notices saying “fever block” in red and black letters were pasted this week on 57 communal stairwells in the district, according to local reports and photographs seen by the Financial Times.
“I feel very lucky I didn’t take part in the banquet, as I have two young kids and thought it was inconvenient to bring them along,” says Sally Zhang, a Baibuting resident. “There are now more than 10 infections among my neighbours”.
The epidemic ranks as the biggest crisis to have hit Xi Jinping, China’s Communist party leader, since he took power in 2012. Not only has the outbreak brought large swaths of the world’s second-largest economy to a grinding halt, it also undermines the party’s aura of competence.
Piecing together the events in Wuhan shows that for at least three weeks before the banquet, city authorities had been informed about the virus spreading in their midst but issued orders to suppress the news. In effect, they engineered a cover-up that played down the seriousness of the outbreak, according to officials and medical professionals.
The most fateful consequence of the official silence was that it facilitated the exodus of some 5m people in the weeks before the city was quarantined on January 22, thus helping to transport the virus all over the country and overseas. Slow and sometimes contradictory statements from the World Health Organization, which is responsible for warning the world of public health emergencies, also hampered early efforts to combat the crisis.
Just as with China’s Sars outbreak that killed 800 people worldwide in 2002-03, the central shortcomings in China’s response have derived from its rigidly hierarchical political system.
“There is no question that the Wuhan government underestimated the disease,” says a senior adviser to China’s central government, who declined to be named. “The mayor of Wuhan has neither the expertise nor the willingness to follow health experts’ advice. His concern is that an escalation in disease prevention may hurt the local economy and social stability.”
He adds: “In the current political atmosphere, which values obedience more than competence, local officials have an incentive to avoid taking responsibility.”
Jude Blanchette, a China analyst at CSIS, a Washington-based think-tank, also sees a political dimension behind the health emergency. “There’s a natural inclination for party officials at all levels to bury negative information and censor dissenting views irrespective of who’s in charge in Beijing,” says Mr Blanchette. “But under Xi Jinping, the inclination to suppress has become endemic and, in this case, contributed to a prolonged period of inaction that allowed the virus to spread.”
Timeline of an outbreak
DEC 8
The first patient to be later diagnosed with Wuhan coronavirus presents with symptoms. Chinese medical experts later trace an earlier case of a patient who experienced the symptoms of the virus on December 1.
DEC 30
Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor, informs fellow doctors in an online chat group of seven new pneumonia cases. But Wuhan medical authorities forbid doctors from making public announcements and order them to report cases internally.
JAN 2
Hospitals admit 41 patients in Wuhan, 27 of whom had direct exposure to a local seafood market which is regarded as one of the sources of the virus.
JAN 10
Scientists publish the first gene sequencing data on the virus, showing it to be from the same family as the Sars coronavirus.
JAN 18
The number of infected patients rises to 62. Wuhan city government holds an annual mass public banquet in Baibuting with some 40,000 families making and sharing food.
JAN 21
The US reports the first laboratory-confirmed case as the virus starts to spread beyond mainland China.
JAN 23
Wuhan suspends all public transportation from the city, including bus, metro and ferry lines. Additionally, all outbound trains and flights are halted.
FEB 5
The count of countries and territories to have reported confirmed cases rises to 27.
www.bbc.co.uk
