Based on Hiroshi Yuasa’s Sankei column, this article examines why the Chinese Communist Party later became furious over the term “Wuhan virus,” even though Xinhua and the Global Times themselves had once used it. It explores the CCP’s concealment, blame-shifting, attacks on the United States, threats involving medical supplies, and the totalitarian instinct to rewrite the narrative from “loser of concealment” to “winner of containment.”

April 5, 2020
Judging from the fact that the Global Times, affiliated with the People’s Daily, the organ of the Communist Party, continued to use this popular name several times afterward, one can infer that even the Chinese Communist Party itself felt no sense of incongruity about it.
The following is from Hiroshi Yuasa’s regular column, published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “Far from apologizing, they make it into a favor.”
Please look at the opening of the English article published here, titled “Wuhan virus.”
The article, carried on Xinhua’s website on January 22, reported that the venue for the women’s football Olympic qualifiers scheduled to be held in Wuhan, Hubei Province, would be moved to Nanjing because of the outbreak of the “Wuhan virus.”
There is nothing complicated about it.
The very state-run news agency of China itself had used the popular name that now sends the Chinese leadership into a rage when it hears “Wuhan virus.”
Moreover, since it had boldly placed the term in the headline, one might think that the agency’s executives were severely reprimanded.
But I have heard no such story.
At that point, perhaps they did not imagine that a virus measuring only about one ten-thousandth of a millimeter in diameter would, in just a few weeks, cover the entire earth.
Judging from the fact that the Global Times, affiliated with the People’s Daily, the organ of the Communist Party, continued to use this popular name several times afterward, one can infer that even the Chinese Communist Party itself felt no sense of incongruity about it.
That is because, compared with the official name “COVID-19,” it is far easier to understand when a place name is included, as with existing viruses.
January 22, when Xinhua carried this news, was two days after President Xi Jinping had publicly instructed that the “virus be brought under control.”
The fact that Chinese authorities now strike a pose of anger when they hear the term “Wuhan virus” can only be because Beijing has made a major policy shift.
Self-serving transformation is a common tactic in the art of war.
Concealing inconvenient truths
Until now, the Chinese Communist Party has concealed the outbreak of the virus for several weeks or more, silenced doctors who told the truth, imprisoned journalists, and obstructed scientific investigations.
As a result, it cannot escape responsibility for damaging the health of the Chinese people and people throughout the world, causing many to die, and plunging economic society into great chaos.
Trying to hide inconvenient truths is the very nature of totalitarianism.
The first target of its irritation was the media.
The expulsion of reporters from three American newspapers was a declaration of intent that it would never permit the spread of the Wuhan virus to be discussed as a limitation of dictatorship.
The subsequent exchange between the United States and China over the expulsion of journalists was reminiscent of the Cold War era between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The clear counteroffensive by the Xi Jinping administration began in March.
On March 4, Xinhua began circulating a bizarre commentary saying that “the world should thank China.”
It took up the fact that the Wuhan virus had spread to the United States and that three states had declared states of emergency, and commented that China had succeeded in controlling the virus, while “the United States, in turn, is in the midst of a ferocious storm.”
The commentary further threatened that, if the Trump administration tried to make companies around the world cut off China’s supply chains, China would retaliate by banning exports of pharmaceuticals to the United States and “throwing the United States into the raging sea of coronavirus.”
As expected, the Communist Party has a rich vocabulary of threats.
It is true that American pharmaceuticals are deeply dependent on China, exposing the vulnerability of the supply chain.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had even reported to Congress a shortage of pharmaceuticals caused by the spread of the Wuhan virus.
China produces 40 percent of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients, including antibiotics and painkillers, and the United States imports 80 percent of its antibiotics from China.
As its conclusion, the commentary uses a perverse logic: since China gave the world precious time to fight the virus, “the United States needs to apologize to China, and the world needs to thank China.”
To put it in the style of Natsuhiko Yamamoto, far from apologizing, they make it into a favor.
From “loser” to “winner”
Professor Bradley Thayer of the University of Texas says that this kind of deception is being used because, as the current pandemic crisis has discredited China’s totalitarian model and threatens to derail the “Chinese Dream” of becoming number one in the world, a new story has become necessary.
The first page of that story begins on March 10, with President Xi’s inspection visit to Wuhan.
As the inspection visit approached, the announced number of infected people began to decrease.
However, since a doctor at an isolation facility had told foreign media that “the improvement is a deception,” Xi’s inspection visit was probably a skillfully staged performance of success in controlling the virus.
In other words, it was an operation to shift from the first stage, the “loser of concealment” of the virus, to the second stage, the “winner of containment.”
In fact, before this, it would later become clear that President Xi, who had been facing domestic criticism over his handling of the virus, had instructed officials to attack those who were “slandering” China.
Naturally, the United States was included among them.
When U.S. President Trump said “Chinese virus” and Secretary of State Pompeo called it “Wuhan virus,” Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Party Politburo, became angry, saying they were “trying to stigmatize China,” and Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang repeatedly expressed “strong anger.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s blowing of the baseless conspiracy theory that the virus had leaked from the U.S. military also falls within this flow.
As a result, a structure was created in which domestic critics of Xi could be dismissed as “traitors helping China’s enemies.”
Even if totalitarianism is poor at the liberal act of making policy failures transparent, it is very good at creating new stories to disguise initial failures.
Turning crisis into opportunity
As the third stage, the Chinese Communist Party seeks to impress upon the world the image of “China strong in crisis,” claiming that it has already brought the virus under control.
In order to prevent capital from flowing out of the country and foreign companies from withdrawing, it is indispensable for China to appeal that it is a safe “factory of the world.”
With the United States surpassing China in the number of infections, China has sent out the huge quantities of pharmaceuticals and masks it holds, one after another, to Asia and Europe.
In particular, it has provided support mainly to countries incorporated into its “Belt and Road” economic-zone concept, seeking to impress upon the world that China is a leader of global politics in place of the United States.
According to the American research institution Horizon Advisory, the Xi administration has begun to see the infectious-disease crisis, in which the virus infection spreads with a time lag from China to Asia, Europe, and the United States, as an opportunity instead.
Its aim is to capture global demand before the United States and Europe, which enter the pandemic later than China, the source of the outbreak, can restart their economic activity several months later.
However, a declaration of victory over the virus made too early has a major pitfall waiting.
In past battles against epidemics, when rulers loosened countermeasures against the virus, they were swallowed up by a second wave of the pandemic.