Based on Akio Yaita’s essay in Seiron, this article examines the Chinese Communist Party’s response to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Despite the spread of infection in Wuhan, the authorities concealed information, silenced doctors and citizens, and prioritized political schedules such as the People’s Congress. It questions the essence of Xi Jinping’s regime, which values national face over the lives of the people.

March 2, 2020
National Face over the People: Akio Yaita Exposes the Essence of Xi Jinping’s China
The following is based on an essay by Akio Yaita, deputy foreign news editor of the Sankei Shimbun and one of the world’s foremost China experts, published in the March 2 issue of the monthly magazine Seiron under the title “Xi Jinping Values National Face over the People.”
The Japanese people must take 900 yen and go immediately to the nearest bookstore to buy it.
I will convey it to people throughout the world through my English translation.
Every reader should feel unforgivable anger toward the Chinese Communist Party.
They should feel the same anger toward the conduct of the United Nations, which has long been manipulated by that regime.
Even so, it is no exaggeration to say that the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party led by Xi Jinping is the worst in history.
To the international community that bows to such a country for money, the Asahi Shimbun must preach its favorite doctrine of “noble poverty.”
Without a moment’s delay, the Asahi Shimbun must preach the spirit of noble poverty to China and to the countries that follow it.
In this essay, Yaita examines China’s response to the novel coronavirus.
To state the conclusion first, China’s response was reckless, disorderly, and consistently behind events.
Without any proper understanding of the public good, only tyranny continued.
The first confirmed infection in Wuhan, Hubei Province, the source of the outbreak, occurred on December 8, 2019.
After that, the number of infected people gradually increased in hospitals in the city.
Some Chinese media briefly reported that patients with pneumonia of unknown cause had been confirmed in Wuhan, but there was no detailed reporting at all.
By late December, because many patients were found around the Huanan Seafood Market in the city center, speculation spread on the internet that this market might be the source of infection.
At the market, small animals for food, including snakes, rabbits, and bats, were being sold, and the possibility that it was the source of the infectious disease was strongly suspected.
The city authorities had already grasped by then that the infection was spreading.
Nevertheless, the city authorities imposed a gag order on both the media and medical personnel, forbidding any information from being leaked outside.
In fact, in Wuhan, the People’s Congress, equivalent to a city council in Japan, was scheduled to be held from January 6 to 10.
After that, from January 11 to 17, the People’s Congress of Hubei Province, to which Wuhan belongs, was also scheduled.
These meetings review the annual activities, governing policy, and budget of the local Communist Party leadership.
For local leaders, the evaluation of the congress affects their future promotion.
They could not allow an infectious disease to spread widely before such meetings.
This is a story difficult to imagine in Japan, but the main reason Wuhan did not announce the pneumonia infections is said to have been “the convenience of the leaders.”
In Japan, if officials concealed information in such a situation, they would be harshly denounced and held responsible.
But Chinese officials do not think that way.
They almost never place the lives of ordinary people first.
Rather, they prioritize self-protection and feel neither hesitation nor resistance in leaving ordinary people behind.
At the end of December, Wuhan finally closed the seafood market.
But it took almost no other measures.
What the authorities did was have the police crack down on people who posted information on the internet saying that pneumonia was spreading.
On January 1, 2020, the city’s public security authorities announced that they had punished eight medical personnel for publishing and reposting false information online.
The eight were summoned, interrogated for a long time, and made to write statements of reflection.
They were released after receiving severe warnings, but the authorities issued a statement to the media saying that spreading rumors and disturbing order would not be tolerated.
If one writes about the disease on the internet, one will be treated as a criminal.
That fear was implanted in the citizens of Wuhan.
This scene makes one consider how important it is to have media that check and criticize the actions of the government and the authorities.
Japanese media have their own problems.
Still, why do Chinese officials spend their time punishing those who raise problems instead of solving the problems themselves?
It is because in China there are no media at all that critically comment on and monitor the tyranny and failures of the authorities.
When serious problems occur inside China, Chinese intellectuals check the U.S. government-affiliated radio broadcaster Voice of America.
This is because they believe that information from the United States is far more accurate and useful than announcements from the Chinese authorities.
In the case of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus, information from the U.S. Embassy was also checked and forwarded to relatives and friends.
When President Trump announced his intention to bring American citizens in Wuhan home on a government-chartered plane, comments appeared saying that valuing one’s own citizens is the foundation of democracy, and that the difference from a certain country was obvious.
It does not look after its own people.
It does not value its own people.
This is not limited to Wuhan, nor is it limited to infectious disease control.
Under the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party, it is ordinary, even standard.
This may be called an event that plainly reveals China’s concealment-oriented nature.
The more fundamental problem is that such scenes have become normal in Chinese society, and movements to correct them rarely arise.
Even in January, the number of infected people in Wuhan continued to increase.
However, the city government completely ignored this.
On January 5, the city government stated that human-to-human transmission had not been confirmed and that infection among medical personnel had not been confirmed.
On January 14, police temporarily detained several Hong Kong journalists who had come to cover the infectious disease.
The photographs they had taken were forcibly deleted.
On January 17, the city’s health commission announced that no new infections had been confirmed since January 3.
Yet by that time, patients had already flooded most hospitals in Wuhan.
Long lines extended outside the hospitals, and even the corridors were filled with patients receiving intravenous drips.
Doctors in the hospitals were struggling desperately.
But they had been strictly silenced by the authorities.
If a patient complained of coughing, cough medicine was prescribed.
If a patient said he had a fever, fever-reducing medicine was prescribed.
Only symptomatic treatment of that level was possible.
January brings the Lunar New Year.
There is a great national movement of people returning home.
Many Chinese people return to their hometowns, spend the New Year holidays there, and then go back across the country.
This made a sudden spread of infection inevitable.
On January 20, a major turning point came.
Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory specialist, spoke on television about the seriousness of the infection.
Seventeen years earlier, in 2003, Zhong had been responsible for countermeasures when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, raged in China.
During SARS as well, the Chinese government at the time concealed information, just as it did this time, and as a result, its response was greatly delayed.
Zhong, who was working at a medical institution in Guangdong Province, sounded the alarm through Hong Kong media and others that the infection was spreading, and severely criticized the government’s response.
This caused a major stir both inside and outside China.
However, unlike the present regime, the Hu Jintao administration at that time listened to Zhong’s warning and recognized the seriousness of the situation.
The mayor of Beijing, the health minister, and other responsible officials were dismissed, and Zhong was appointed leader of the countermeasure team.
This time as well, as soon as Zhong learned that pneumonia of unknown cause was spreading in Wuhan, he led a team of experts to the site and began an investigation.
Through China Central Television, he testified that human-to-human transmission had been confirmed and that the spread of infection was already in a serious state.
He sounded the alarm about the crisis.
Yet even after that, the Chinese government’s response changed hardly at all.
From 10 a.m. on January 23, the authorities cut off transportation linking the city with the outside and effectively sealed off Wuhan, a city of more than eleven million people.
It was close to a sudden idea by the central party leadership, and it came as a complete surprise even to local leaders.
Once again, the lives of ordinary citizens were left behind.
When a serious problem first occurs, the authorities do nothing.
The situation becomes grave.
Then suddenly they change completely, exercise coercive power, and forcibly intervene in the lives of the people without allowing any objection.
This is the method of the Chinese Communist Party.
Moreover, information about the lockdown leaked in advance.
Citizens who learned of it several hours before the lockdown tried one after another to escape from Wuhan.
Crowds rushed to stations, airports, and highways, causing great confusion.
One Communist Party official took his family and fled by car before dawn to a relative’s home in neighboring Jiangxi Province.
He proudly posted this on the internet, but when he was criticized for irresponsibly spreading the virus and for simply running away, he hurriedly deleted it.
According to what the mayor of Wuhan revealed at a press conference, as many as five million people had left Wuhan before the lockdown.
Those people scattered throughout China as new sources of infection.
When the lockdown was imposed, preparations and measures for logistics had not been properly made.
Inside the city, supplies ran out because of the lockdown, and food disappeared from supermarkets.
Hospitals suffered from shortages of medicine.
Bodies were left not only in morgues but even beside waiting rooms.
Patients and families who could not obtain medicine no matter how long they waited, and who could not receive treatment, became enraged and even attacked doctors.
This is the reality of the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party led by Xi Jinping.
National face over the people.
The self-protection of leaders over the people.
The convenience of the Party over the people.
The Wuhan virus has exposed that essence to the world.
This essay will continue.