Published on February 6, 2020.
This article discusses Sakurai Yoshiko’s Shukan Shincho column on the Chinese Communist Party’s concealment of information over the spread of the novel coronavirus, President Xi Jinping’s response, comparison with Hu Jintao’s handling of SARS, the reality of Wuhan, and the structure of one-party dictatorship that disregards the lives and happiness of the people.
It also examines the impact on China’s economy, the decline of the Xi Jinping regime’s authority, the possible effect on the National People’s Congress, and the future outlook for Japan-China relations.

2020-02-06
The current announcements by the Chinese authorities are absolutely false.
If the world learns the truth about Wuhan, it will be astonished.
That is why the Chinese Communist Party is now releasing information little by little every day.
The following is from Sakurai Yoshiko’s serial column, published in Shukan Shincho, which went on sale today, under the title “The Virus Undermining China’s Dictatorial Regime.”
This essay, too, proves that Sakurai Yoshiko is a “national treasure” as defined by Saicho.
The novel coronavirus is relentlessly exposing the true nature of President Xi Jinping, the absolute ruler who reigns over 1.4 billion people and aims to become a twenty-first-century emperor for life.
This virus, which emerged in Wuhan in central China, may become the trigger that prompts the exit of the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party dictatorship and of Xi Jinping himself.
Even if it does not go that far, the loosening of the foundations of the world’s second-largest power cannot help but greatly change the dynamics of international politics.
In its response to this virus, the Xi administration has ended up exposing to the world that the Chinese Communist Party has made no progress at all.
They have learned nothing from the experience of SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, seventeen years ago.
Rather, they have regressed compared with that time.
At that time, the Chinese government drew strong criticism from the international community for “concealing” information about SARS.
Even so, compared with Xi’s great blunder this time, Hu Jintao, then president of China, is evaluated as having made a certain degree of effort.
The first case of SARS infection was confirmed in Guangdong Province in November 2002, soon spread to neighboring Hong Kong, and then reached Beijing in March of the following year, 2003.
At that time, the renowned virologist Zhong Nanshan gave an interview to Hong Kong media and exposed the fact that the Chinese government was concealing information.
Incidentally, Zhong is also the person who, this time as well, announced to the media the important information that the novel coronavirus, which the authorities had been concealing, was being transmitted “from person to person.”
Informed of the danger of SARS, Hu dismissed the mayor of Beijing and the minister of health, who had been at the center of the concealment of information, and hastened the disclosure of information.
Yaita Akio, deputy editor of the foreign news department of the Sankei Shimbun, explained the situation at that time.
“In the initial stage of the SARS outbreak, information was concealed, but Hu Jintao dealt with those responsible in a clear manner and moved to disclose information.
As a result, media in Guangdong Province, such as Southern Weekly, began actively reporting on the danger of SARS.
This time, the Chinese government should have had countermeasures in hand based on the SARS experience.
However, the Xi administration has basically done nothing.”
“The Announcements Are Absolutely False”
Even now, in China’s internet space, information about the spread of the novel coronavirus is being deleted one item after another.
Clearly, this is the intention of the regime.
Chinese media, which are spokesmen for the Communist Party, mostly transmit only news of the sort that the Communist Party leadership is working hard.
It is impossible to think that truth will be transmitted from such a speech space.
How far has the novel virus really spread?
We have no means but to infer, but the case of the Japanese people who returned from Wuhan offers one clue.
Of the 565 people who returned, eight were infected.
Therefore, the infection rate is 1.4 percent.
If this number is applied to the approximately nine million Chinese people confined in Wuhan, the number of infected people becomes 126,000.
That is a completely different order of magnitude from the approximately 17,000 people announced by the Chinese government as of February 3.
What should be noted is that the Japanese people who returned did not have especially frequent contact with Chinese people, and it is reasonable to think that their sanitary environment was not poor.
Therefore, the infection rate of 1.4 percent among the Japanese may be lower than that among the Chinese people of Wuhan.
In that case, the number of infected people in Wuhan may be even greater than the more than 120,000 mentioned above.
Yaita, who knows China thoroughly, said:
“The current announcements by the Chinese authorities are absolutely false.
If the world learns the truth about Wuhan, it will be astonished.
That is why the Chinese Communist Party is now releasing information little by little every day.”
Since entering February, the Chinese authorities have announced that the number of infected people is increasing by units of 2,000 each day, and that the number of deaths is also rapidly increasing.
This is equivalent to saying that both infected people and deaths are increasing like a snowball rolling downhill.
Even so, one should assume that the series of figures released by the Chinese authorities has been set extremely low.
Let us look at several videos in the internet space.
A corpse wrapped in a plastic sheet is being carried out not from a hospital but from an apartment by men who look like health workers, heavily equipped with white protective clothing and masks.
It is reasonable to think that the Chinese person who died was a victim of the novel coronavirus.
What on earth happened to this pitiful person?
Yaita explained:
“The people of Wuhan have in effect been abandoned.
First of all, in Wuhan, all public transportation, including trains and buses, has been stopped.
Gas stations are also closed, so automobiles cannot move.
Residents have no means of getting to hospitals.
Even if one assumes that they somehow manage to reach a hospital, there is already a long line there.
It takes hours before they can be seen by a doctor.
Even if they are examined by a doctor, the hospital has no medicine.
It is truly tragic.”
The Outlook for Japan-China Relations
Xi has had hospital wards built at a rapid pace, but what kind of treatment will be possible there, and whether they will be sufficient to accommodate the surging numbers of patients, are matters of great doubt.
As a result, many people remain at home, and both infected persons and symptomatic patients rest at home.
Some recover through their own immune strength.
Others do not recover and die.
It may be said that nine million people have been placed in a situation that seems to say: those who can recover on their own may recover, and those who cannot survive may die.
That is why Yaita emphasizes that the Chinese Communist Party has in effect abandoned the residents of Wuhan.
These people are not counted among the “infected” or the “dead” announced by the authorities.
There can be no hope that the true reality of the victims of this virus will be correctly conveyed either to the people of China or to the international community.
Under a one-party dictatorship, almost without exception, the lives and happiness of the people and the peace of society are taken lightly.
All information about abnormalities and absurdities that corrode society is hidden.
People’s lives become suffocating, and the weaker a person is, the more he is made to suffer.
Before the face of the party and the state, many citizens are deprived even of their lives.
This is the reality of a one-party dictatorial state.
Voices demanding Xi’s responsibility for having fallen into such a tragic situation are not yet large.
For the Communist Party, even for its own survival, suppressing the virus is now the top priority, and perhaps it has no room to question the responsibility of the leader.
However, the virus is deeply undermining the foundations of the Communist Party.
The Chinese economy is suffering a devastating impact.
Just as growth had been slowing because of the U.S.-China trade war, the virus struck, and the Chinese economy has been frozen.
The source of the Chinese Communist Party’s power lies in the distribution of wealth through economic growth.
When it can no longer do that, the anger of the Chinese people will likely be fierce.
Looking back on Chinese history, in which regimes have been overthrown by revolutions from below, the outlook for the Xi Jinping system is bleak.
Under such circumstances, can the National People’s Congress, scheduled to open on March 5, be held?
The outlook for Japan-China relations will also be greatly influenced by that.