While the authoritarian system allows for mobilisation of resources, it also pushes a dangerous culture of auto-denying ‘bad news’ that allows a problem to fester
In February 2003, an American businessman travelling from China got afflicted with pneumonia-like symptoms while on a flight to Singapore. En route the flight had stopped at Hanoi and the businessman was rushed to a hospital where he soon died. Many others in the medical staff attending to him also developed the same disease and an Italian doctor, Carlo Urbani, recognising the severity of the strange viral threat, alarmed the World Health Organisation (WHO) – later, he too succumbed to the mysterious virus. Three months earlier, the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic had indeed accounted for its first casualty in the Guandong province of China and many more had followed, but China had deliberately kept the news under wraps from the WHO and did not announce the outbreak till the virus and the “bad news” had gone beyond its controllable borders. The initial Chinese cover-up had resulted in a crucial time-lag that had facilitated the spread of the SARS epidemic. Later China apologised for its “slowness” but only after 800 lives were lost in the first global pandemic of the 21st century. A local Chinese whistleblower doctor, who was among the first to report about the mysterious SARS outbreak, was subsequently demonised as a “bad” citizen and placed under house-arrest as he had ostensibly brought disrepute to the nation!
Seventeen years hence, yet another airborne virus has broken out in the city of Wuhan with the lessons of the SARS mishandling remaining essentially unlearnt. What has changed in the last 17 years has been the sure emergence of the new “superpower” China on the global highway, which is even more intolerant to anyone, anything and any news that could apply brakes towards its believed destiny. China is not only among the countries with the most restrictive media environment, it is also the most sophisticatedly controlled domain that barely allows a squeak to filter out. The recent examples of putting the virtual media gag on mammoth scale societal dissonances like the Uighur “re-education camps” or the Hong Kong protests are uniquely China, which is forever in a state of paranoia against the prospects of any negative news filtering out. Towards this end, it “manages” the media through a variety of means, from brazen bans, coercion, threats to even simply “buying out” silence (usually in the case of vassal countries like Pakistan, North Korea etc). Such an environmental hypersensitivity has only heightened in the recent times and all potentially negative news are immediately slammed as “unpatriotic rumours.”
This militates in the face of undisputable development that has taken place in the fields of infrastructure, technology, socio-economic parameters and so on. Ironically, the city of Wuhan also hosts one of the most advanced research laboratories in the field of epidemic research. Such a dominating governance instinct puts the entire credibility of the exact situation, scale and control measures in question as the news emanating from China is solely from the governmental agencies and filtered through lenses.
Reacting to the basic precautionary measures taken by most countries, the state’s mouthpiece Global Times made space for some irresistible realpolitik: “Starting Sunday, the US barred foreigners who have travelled to China within the past 14 days from entering the country, far beyond the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaration that does not recommend travel and trade restrictions for China. The US was the first country to take such an extreme measure, setting a bad example worldwide.” Meanwhile, Zeng Guang, the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, has admitted to the initial slackness due to “lack of scientific recognition” and also owing to “probably some executive issues.” The Chinese government is still playing down the impact of the latest outbreak, even though the infectivity of this virus has far surpassed that of the 2003 SARS epidemic.
While the Chinese reaction has probably been more intensive as compared to 2003 SARS in terms of building makeshift hospitals, requisitioning emergency medical staff from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and round-the-clock construction of related facilities, the strict denial of any foreign or even independent reportage of the outbreak remains unchanged. China was already reeling under an overheated economy with the lowest growths recorded in nearly three decades. The added challenges of punishing trade-wars with the United States and unending Hong Kong protests, were further taking their toll. Now, estimates abound of additional lost growth of between $60-70 billion or a further drop in GDP by two percentage points in the first quarter of the year. The fear of continuing “bad news” could lead to an unavoidable extension of the Lunar New Year holidays, keeping the shutters on the factories that would further cripple economic activity and impact global supply chains.
All in all, the economic, social, diplomatic and strategic cost to China will be very damaging, but it has the reserves, capacity and wherewithal to “pull through” yet another crisis. What will become increasingly difficult going forward is the ability of the regime to continuously “cover up,” should the common man on the street feel the pinch, post the crisis. China has its hands full on many fronts simultaneously and its ability to weather the multiple storms will be tested as its economic health will not be as robust as it was earlier. China could utilise the situation to either “open up” itself or further clamp down on censorship in order to sustain a government-fed narrative. More likely than not, regime-insecurity will ensure authoritarian impulses and preferences. While the authoritarian system allows for unprecedented mobilisation of resources, it also fosters a dangerous culture of auto-denying “bad news” that allows a problem to prolong itself longer than it would normally have, had the issue been tabled in all transparency. The invocation of “patriotism” to cover up tragedies is the bane of all single-party regimes. The lessons of SARS may have been incorporated in terms of building infrastructural capacities to manage crises. But the Xi Jingping era has only worsened on democratic freedoms and transparency. The Coronavirus saga exemplifies that.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)
