Before his untimely death due to coronavirus, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, the first whistleblower of the Covid-19 pandemic, was severely reprimanded by his hospital administration and Wuhan Public Security Bureau ostensibly for ‘rumor mongering and publishing false reports.’ His death triggered a nationwide outpouring of grief and anger, with hashtags ‘Wuhan government owes Dr. Li an apology’ and ‘we want freedom of expression’ flooding his Weibo page. The Chinese government swiftly intervened and censured the Weibo chat feeds. The Supreme People’s Court of China later exonerated him posthumously.
If it were in a liberal democracy, with an unrestrained free flow of information, Dr Li’s early warning reports of rapid transmission of a SARS-like virus would have prompted the government to implement contingency epidemiological responses and issue a global alert. But in a nation where saving face or ‘Mianze’ is an integral part of the cultural ethos, China quickly dismissed allegations of the virus’s Wuhan origins and soft-pedalled on its transmission curve. It was unchallenging for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sabotage truth, for it has one of the most repressive forms of internet controls on the planet. Enter the dark realms of China’s digital authoritarianism as the world confronts the aftermath of the devastating pandemic, with more than seven million perished and the ‘Great Lockdown’ eroding trillions of dollars from global economies.
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