The state of China in the wake of coronavirus
The China Letter: April 22, 2020
Show them the money
The lawsuit filed by the state of Missouri, alleging China lied about COVID-19, followed Wuhan raising its related death toll by 50 per cent. Beijing called for a stronger testing regime to test the coronavirus, amid re-emerging local transmissions. But at least one country is pressing to find past answers:
China continues to be accused of discriminating against Africans in its coronavirus fight, symbolized by a McDonald’s location banning black people, before it apologized. Meanwhile, measures in the northeast to keep COVID-19 from crossing the border with Russia expanded to discouraging Chinese national returnees:
Dollars and nonsense
There’s plenty of policy room in China to cushion the impact of the coronavirus, according to the state planner, in response to official data that claimed a decline of 6.8 per cent, amounting to the worst downturn since the 1960s. Naturally, the Chinese state media’s reporting on this historic collapse is striving to downplay the gloomier news.
Pandemic vs. protest
The arrest of 15 of the city’s most high-profile pro-democracy activists signalled that protests in Hong Kong were back in action after being lulled due to COVID-19. But the pandemic is being used by police to claim that a crackdown is for health reasons.
After being released from prison, Wang Quanzhang was sent to house arrest on the grounds of requiring quarantine, presumably for 14 additional days. Two weeks later, the U.S. State Department has taken notice of how the human rights lawyer remains separated from his family, and joined the call for Wang to receive his proper freedom.
Behind the new numbers
COVID-19 threatens media freedom around the world, say Reporters Without Borders, whose press freedom ranking puts China in 177th place—ahead of only Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea. Meanwhile, new numbers from Pew Research detail how the U.S. views of China have become increasingly negative amid the outbreak:
Amnesty International also released its 2019 death penalty facts and figures: China remained the world’s biggest executioner, but the secrecy surrounding its data mean that the organization can only estimate that it’s somewhere in the thousands. (The rest of the world fell to a 10-year low of 657, mostly in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt.)
The last words, for now
While spectator sports are paused in most of the world, the Wuhan soccer team returned home after being famously stuck in Spain when the coronavirus outbreak began. But hope for crowds to assemble again are reflected in the new arena being built for the Guangzhou Evergrande, with hopes of playing host to the Asian Cup in 2023:
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