| T109 |
0-1294 |
Sentence |
denotes |
In a rare openness, rarely seen before, the normally secretive Xi admitted at a meeting to coordinate the fight against the virus that China must learn from “obvious shortcomings exposed during its response.” Yet given the second-guessing that always surfaces in these tragedies, “it cannot be denied that the Chinese government tried to control the narrative, another sign of irrational hubris, and as a result, the contagion was allowed to spread, contributing to equally irrational fear.” A China researcher for Human Rights Watch (New York USA) noted: “authorities are as equally, if not more, concerned with silencing criticism as with containing the spread of the coronavirus.…repeating a pattern seen in past public health emergencies.”43 Although less clumsy than with SARS, the government kept all non-Party groups that could have helped prevent the spread of the virus out of the loop.44,45 Chinaʼs religious groups who “reflect the countryʼs decades-long revival and feeling among many Chinese that faith-based groups provide an alternative to the corruption that has plagued the government” are being ignored.46 Will this just be a temporary stay as it was post-SARS, or is China capable of adopting, without conditions, the WHO public health requirements they have ignored to date? |
