Originally published on February 14, 2020.
This article introduces a Financial Times piece published in the Nikkei and discusses the spread of the novel coronavirus, the early cover-up in Wuhan, the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, public anger in China, and the crisis of legitimacy facing the Chinese Communist Party.
Through comparisons with the Mandate of Heaven, dynastic cycles, Chernobyl, and the Arab Spring, it shows how the outbreak developed from a public-health crisis into a fundamental threat to the survival of the Chinese Communist Party.

February 14, 2020
Regarding the initial response that attempted to cover up the new pneumonia, Chinese cyberspace is overflowing with posts expressing ridicule and disgust.
The authorities’ censorship organs are struggling to suppress these posts.
The following is from a Financial Times article published in today’s Nikkei.
The New Pneumonia and the Crisis of a “Dynasty”: A Doctor’s Death Casts a Shadow Over China’s Future
Asia Editor: Jamil Anderlini
Since ancient times, China has believed that successive dynasties repeat a “dynastic cycle.”
A powerful leader unifies all under heaven, rises and prospers as an empire, but eventually declines, loses the “Mandate of Heaven,” and is overthrown by the next dynasty.
China’s concept of the Mandate of Heaven resembles Europe’s “divine right of kings,” in which the right to rule as king is granted by God and the king is responsible only to God.
But it differs in that control over the Celestial Empire, or the Chinese empire, is not granted to the emperor unconditionally.
The “Son of Heaven,” or emperor, possesses absolute authority over his subjects while he sits on the throne.
However, the Son of Heaven does not necessarily have to be of noble birth, and if he is unworthy of the position, unjust, or simply incompetent, he may lose the Mandate of Heaven that was granted to him.
When heaven was thought to be angry, the people were implicitly recognized as having the right to revolt.
Natural disasters, famine, epidemics, invasions, and even armed uprisings by the people were all regarded as signs that the Mandate of Heaven had departed.
After Mao Zedong, the “emperor” from a rural background who seized enormous power, won the civil war in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party tried to erase such concepts as unscientific superstition.
On the other hand, President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has tried to revive some ancient traditions and beliefs.
Even so, Mr. Xi has carefully avoided references to the dynastic cycle and the Mandate of Heaven.
That is especially because, if one looks back through history, this past year has seen a succession of events regarded as ominous signs.
The trade war with the United States, China’s largest trading partner, the open protests in Hong Kong, a former British colony, and the shortage of pork caused by the devastating spread of African swine fever would all, in earlier times, have been regarded as signs that the fall of a dynasty was near.
Yet even these seem insignificant compared with the spread of the novel coronavirus that began late last year in Wuhan, a city in central China.
In an irony of history, Wuhan was the city where the 1911 Xinhai Revolution began, the revolution that overthrew the last emperor of the Qing dynasty.
That same Wuhan has now become the source of a terrifying infectious disease.
This new pneumonia has already spread throughout China and even around the world.
The largest quarantine in history has also been carried out, cutting off transportation and locking down areas where approximately 60 million residents live.
In a public-health emergency, accurate information must be released at the proper time and without concealment.
However, China’s dictatorial system is particularly poor at dealing with such situations.
For that reason, the spread of the new pneumonia can be said to be far more serious than any difficulty Mr. Xi has faced so far.
If the coronavirus can be contained and brought under control within the next few weeks, Mr. Xi may still be able to escape unharmed by shifting responsibility onto local government officials in charge of crisis response and preventing responsibility from reaching himself.
Using the substantial shutdown of economic activity for infection containment as a pretext, Mr. Xi might even be able to argue that it is necessary to further strengthen surveillance and control over Chinese society.
However, if the virus cannot be contained quickly, the new pneumonia may become China’s version of “Chernobyl.”
As with the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986, the falsehoods and absurdities of a dictatorial system would be exposed to the light of day.
Regarding the initial response that attempted to cover up the new pneumonia, Chinese cyberspace is overflowing with posts expressing ridicule and disgust.
The authorities’ censorship organs are struggling to suppress these posts.
One early target of ridicule was a senior health official dispatched from Beijing to Wuhan.
His role was to reassure the public by officially guaranteeing that the new pneumonia was “preventable and controllable.”
This official himself became infected and turned into a symbol of a government steeped in incompetence and falsehood.
Outspoken scholars and intellectuals criticized the Communist Party despite the risk of imprisonment.
They said that the party had lost its “performance-based legitimacy of rule.”
Some even clearly used the words “Mandate of Heaven” and cited numerous examples of decline in the final days of dynasties.
However, the decisive moment in this crisis came on February 7, when Li Wenliang, a 33-year-old ophthalmologist in Wuhan, died.
From that moment, the spread of the new pneumonia developed from one important issue into a major problem concerning the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party.
At the beginning of this crisis, Dr. Li saw many cases of a strange new pneumonia that did not respond to ordinary treatment, and he issued a warning in a chat group of his former classmates from medical school.
Because of this, Dr. Li was disciplined by the hospital where he worked, summoned by the police late at night, and, together with at least seven other doctors, made to sign a confession and a written admonition promising not to spread “rumors” in the future.
When ordinary people learned that Dr. Li himself had become infected with the new pneumonia, they were outraged.
Even the Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest court, criticized the police and praised the doctors who had first sounded the warning.
However, when Dr. Li died on February 7, an even fiercer reaction erupted.
The news of Dr. Li’s death was first reported by state-run media.
This fact suggested that cracks were appearing in the Communist Party’s powerful apparatus of speech control.
The censors had become unable to cope with the flood of online demands such as “We want freedom of speech.”
The reason the story surrounding Dr. Li has the power to move people’s hearts is, in part, that it perfectly matches a classic figure long handed down in China.
An honest and incorruptible Confucian scholar speaks the truth to the emperor, is persecuted, and finally loses his life because of his honesty.
Such a figure has been regarded as a great man in the Chinese scholarly tradition.
Dr. Li fits that image perfectly.
How the coronavirus develops from now on will determine whether Dr. Li will eventually be spoken of alongside a more modern historical figure rather than ancient Confucian scholars.
That figure is the young street vendor who set himself on fire in protest against the injustice of the Tunisian regime.
The “Arab Spring,” the Middle Eastern democratization movement of 2011, began with this young man’s suicide, and as a result, several “dynasties” in the Middle East collapsed.