34 China The EconomistFebruary 1st 2020
2 tary to the foreign reporter in his village.
When the government tells the Chinese
people to make sacrifices for the country,
they listen, he booms. “It’s different from
your Western countries.”
Many villages have shut themselves off
from outsiders using barricades made of
freshly-dug earth, lumps of concrete or, in
one case, a parked tractor (an example out-
side the village of Wangyoufang, southern
Henan, is pictured). At one such roadblock,
old men in disposable face-masks sit at a
wooden office desk, a pot of thermometers
in front of them. The campaign is an odd
mix of high and low technology. Henan po-
lice questioning this reporter were able to
summon up his photograph and details by
tapping his Chinese telephone number
into a mobile device. But electronic
thermometers gave very different readings
in the space of a few seconds—an alarming
flaw when even a hint of fever at a check-
point can result in 14 days of quarantine.Mao had it easy
The virus’s spread is straining a public
health system that lags other Chinese
infrastructure (under-staffed, ill-equipped
hospitals sit next to gleaming high-speed
railway stations). It is also a giant test for an
authoritarian, one-party political system
designed in a simpler China, when most
workers toiled for the state or rural collec-
tives, rarely moved around and relied on
state and party news outlets to learn what
was going on.
Today bullet trains criss-cross the coun-
try. Affluent urbanites use lunar new year
to take foreign holidays. Even villagers in
Weiji admit to reading criticisms of the
government’s crisis response on such so-
cial-media platforms as Weibo or WeChat,
though censors still race to delete any posts
chiding Mr Xi and other national leaders.
Posts rebuking lower-level authorities are
being allowed more often than usual.
When Hubei Daily, a party newspaper,
warned readers to refrain from rumour-
mongering, it triggered a sardonic back-
lash. “I can only trust the punctuation
marks in Hubei Daily,” grumbled a com-
mentator on Weibo. Police have punished
actual rumour-spreaders, such as a man
detained in south-eastern China for three
days for (falsely) messaging friends about
an infected stranger roaming his village. In
contrast, eight “rumour-mongers” pun-
ished by Wuhan police, in a case an-
nounced on January 1st and covered promi-
nently by state media, were in fact doctors
sharing early tidings of a strange new virus
in a medical WeChat group. In a rare inter-
vention, the Supreme People’s Court post-
ed an online article on January 28th la-
menting the silencing of those doctors.
Schooled in the idea that they live in an
all-knowing surveillance state, Chinese
netizens have reacted with surprise as thevirus campaign reveals the authorities’
blind spots. The websites of big state news-
papers have published lists of more than
100 flights and trains taken by infected peo-
ple, urging fellow-passengers to seek med-
ical tests. How come the authorities cannot
find passengers in a split second, asked a
Weibo user, adding: “Aren’t we all 2020-
big-data-high-tech now?”
China’s response to the virus has been
unmistakably authoritarian, involving the
locking down of Hubei’s cities, and manda-
tory orders to stay indoors for a fortnight
for those who leave Hubei and head to such
centres as Shanghai. But it is not totali-
tarian. Unlike in the Mao era, when blind
loyalty was demanded from citizens, the
party has at times responded to public an-
ger with a hint of understanding. In a
much-discussed state television interview,
Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, offered to
resign if the public wished. Still, his mea
culpa contained an unsubtle jab at his mas-
ters in Beijing. Acknowledging that the city
had held back information about the out-
break, Mr Zhou noted that he needed supe-
riors’ permission to disclose news of an in-
fectious disease.
The principle of quarantine is rarely
challenged, even in Wuhan. Residents
reached by telephone describe a mix of
community spirit, such as bakeries offer-
ing free food to medics, a mass singing of
the national anthem out of apartment win-
dows as well as some grumbling about con-
fusing and draconian local decisions. In a
city of 9m people (the mayor says another
5m left, just before the quarantine was im-
posed, because of the holiday and the vi-
rus) taxis are now the only public tran-
sport. They can no longer be hailed on the
streets, however, or summoned through an
app. They have been commandeered by the
city. Duties include “emergency runs” suchas ferrying the sick to hospitals, says Wang
Jie, a retired taxi driver. Rides are free. The
city pays drivers 600 yuan ($86) a day, more
than double what they make in normal
times. Still, many fear being infected, says
Ms Wang. Most have to buy their own pro-
tective masks, goggles and gloves.
Hundreds of expatriates left Wuhan on
chartered airliners this week. Philippe
Klein, a French doctor serving the city’s ex-
patriate community (Wuhan is home to big
French car factories), is staying put. Dr
Klein, whose clinic is attached to the Union
Hospital, describes exhausted local doc-
tors being relieved by military medics, and
by volunteer doctors from other provinces.
The number of new patients seeking test-
ing had been growing each day but has now
stabilised, he says. Hospital bosses hope
that the epidemic will peak in Wuhan
around February 8th. If disease prevention
began slowly, one reason was the cost of
being tested, which put some locals off.
Now the state will pay. It has built field hos-
pitals to house those who test positive.
“Overall, I am optimistic,” says Dr Klein.
Lu Xiaoyu, an academic who works in
Australia but who flew back to Wuhan for
the lunar new year, says morale is rising.
Fine weather on January 28th brought resi-
dents out of their homes. Neighbourhood
food shops have reopened, sparing people
from stressful trips to large supermarkets.
A lingering concern involves discrimina-
tion against Wuhan folk both inside and
outside China. “We have turned into refu-
gees,” he worries. Such concerns are well-
founded. On January 27th several dozen
people from Shanghai refused to board a
plane in Japan when they realised that a
small contingent from Wuhan was aboard.
(Their accent gave them away.) The inci-
dent went viral on China’s social media.
Many netizens backed the Shanghainese.
The virus has given new energy to local-
ist sentiment within the protest movement
in Hong Kong, where anti-mainland preju-
dice lurks alongside a yearning for greater
political freedom. Bowing to public pres-
sure, Hong Kong’s government is denying
entry to Hubei residents and those recently
in the province. That did not stop someone
posting online bomb threats and demands
to seal the mainland border, shortly after
police found three small, home-made ex-
plosive devices.
Chinese leaders insist that one-party
rule is vital for stability and progress. The
world will judge, in due course, whether
their brand of bossy, secretive authoritar-
ianism helped to stop a pandemic, or let
the coronavirus spread out of control. Al-
ready, the crisis is revealing a country
which talks a lot about unity and is capable
of great feats of national mobilisation, but
which is easily divided and painfully low
on trust. That is an ailment for which party
Ignore the welcome sign bosses seem to have no cure. 7