[Public frustrations were once left uncensored
online, and news outlets reported rigorously on the epidemic. Those days may be
past.]
By
Raymond Zhong
 |
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A
nearly empty commercial street in Beijing on Wednesday.
Credit
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
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SHANGHAI
— As the number of
coronavirus infections in China continues to surge without any sign of slowing
down, the Communist government has clamped down on the news media and the
internet, signaling an effort to control the narrative about a crisis that has
become a once-in-a-generation challenge for leaders in Beijing.
Chinese health officials said Thursday that
563 people had died from the virus, up from 490 people the day before, and that
there were 28,018 confirmed cases of infection. Thousands more cases are being
reported every day, and many Chinese fear that the virus’s spread is not being
adequately controlled.
With frustrations running high across the
country, China’s leaders appear to be strengthening information controls after
a brief spell in which news organizations were able to report thoroughly on the
crisis, and many negative comments about the official response were left
uncensored online.
In recent days, both state-run news media and
more commercially minded outlets have been told to focus on positive stories
about virus relief efforts, according to three people at Chinese news
organizations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal
directives.
Internet platforms have removed a range of
articles that suggest shortcomings in the Chinese government’s response or are
otherwise negative about the outbreak.
Local officials have also cracked down on
what they call online “rumors” about the virus. China’s public security
ministry this week lauded such efforts, which have continued even after one
person who was reprimanded for spreading rumors turned out to be a doctor
sounding the alarm about early cases of the illness.
The Chinese government has shifted its
strategy for information control in response to the changing nature of the
public’s discontent, said King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the Journalism
and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.
In the early days of the crisis, online
vitriol had largely been directed at the local authorities. Now, more of the
anger is being aimed at higher-level leadership, and there seems to be more of
it over all, he said.
Late last month, for instance, after The New
England Journal of Medicine published a research paper about early cases of the
virus, Chinese web users pounced on the fact that several of the authors worked
for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, saying they should
have been informing the public, not furthering their research careers.
“Now I understand,” one person wrote on the
social platform Weibo. “The C.D.C.’s purpose all along was to publish research
papers.”
“I’m so mad that I’m speechless,” wrote
another.
The researchers later said that all their
information about the infections had already been made public before the paper
was written.
At this point, Professor Fu said, more
censorship “wouldn’t stop the public frustration.”
The rapidly rising number of infections and
deaths from the new virus has put renewed pressure on the senior leadership in
China. Hospitals near the center of the epidemic have been overwhelmed, and
people with flulike symptoms have been turned away. Many cases have not been
diagnosed because of a shortage of testing kits.
Still, the number of people in China who are
recovering is rising, as well. And on Wednesday, a senior Chinese health expert
attributed the large rise in the number of confirmed cases to the fact that
hospitals had been able to diagnose the virus more quickly. The number of
suspected cases has dropped for the same reason, the expert, Li Xingwang, said
at an official news briefing.
The new curbs on information appeared to have
been set in motion earlier this week, when China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and
other senior officials said at a meeting that they would “strengthen control
over online media” as one of several measures to maintain social stability.
The leaders said that the government’s
propaganda efforts should focus on “vividly conveying the stirring achievements
from the front lines of epidemic prevention” and “showing the Chinese people’s
unity and spirit of pulling together in difficult times,” according to Xinhua,
the official news agency.
After the meeting, a top official at China’s
central propaganda department told the state broadcaster CCTV that his
department had dispatched more than 300 journalists to the epidemic’s front
lines in Wuhan and its surrounding province, Hubei.
The official, Zhang Xiaoguo, said the
department would make publicizing the government’s prevention-and-control
campaign its “highest priority.”
It was unclear whether the 300 journalists
included those who were already reporting in Hubei, or whether they would be
new arrivals. It was also unclear what news organizations they would represent.
The propaganda department did not respond to a fax requesting comment.
The effort has been met with some sarcasm on
social media.
“Positive energy is coming at last,” one user
wrote on Weibo, using the Chinese government’s term for the kind of boosterish,
uncritical tone it prefers to see in news coverage.
The post was liked more than 27,000 times.
But all the comments below the post were eventually deleted, and new comments
have been forbidden.
Employees at Chinese news organizations this
week described a mandatory change of tone in their stories and fresh orders to
hew to the official line.
Journalists at the Xinhua news agency, for
example, have been told to keep their coverage of the virus positive, according
to internal instructions seen by The New York Times. They were ordered not to
continue mentioning the fact that the World Health Organization had declared a
global health emergency and not to cover every infection discovered overseas.
“Only cover what needs to be covered,” the
instructions said.
Across the rest of China’s news landscape,
articles on a broad range of themes have been blocked or deleted online in
recent days.
They include a report in the financial newsmagazine
Caijing about deaths in Wuhan that might not have been counted in the official
tally; a firsthand account of a funeral home in Wuhan; and even an interview
with the head of a popular restaurant chain who said that he might be out of
cash in a few months if the virus were not contained.
Beijing is moving to tighten up its
management of the epidemic as governments worldwide continue cutting themselves
off from China to stop coronavirus cases from being imported.
Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese
territory, said on Wednesday that it would begin requiring all people who
arrive from mainland China to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine. Hong Kong
has 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including three that were
transmitted locally.
Carrie Lam, the city’s top official, has
resisted demands from some lawmakers and medical workers to close the border
completely, calling it discriminatory and not in line with W.H.O. guidelines.
But she has enacted a series of measures, including closing all but three
border crossings, that have resulted in a sharp drop in entries from the
mainland.
The United States and other countries have
also imposed entry restrictions on visitors from China. Such measures have
thrown the global travel industry into disarray.
Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio of Italy said
in an interview with The Associated Press that Italy’s flight ban on commercial
flights to and from China, put into place on Jan. 30, could ease soon now that
thermal scanners are being installed at airports throughout Italy and taking
the temperatures of arriving passengers from all foreign flights.
Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based
international airline, has asked its 27,000 employees to take three weeks of
unpaid leave. The carrier has already cut nearly all flights to and from
mainland China and has said it would pare back flights across its network as it
faces its biggest emergency since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.
Twenty people on a cruise ship carrying 2,666
passengers and 1,045 crew members and quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, have
tested positive for the coronavirus, the cruise line, Princess Cruises, said on
Wednesday. And another 170 people who may have been exposed have yet to be
tested.
The ship arrived in Yokohama on Tuesday, but
the authorities did not allow anyone off. An 80-year-old Hong Kong resident who
had disembarked earlier in his home city was found to be infected.
On Wednesday, hundreds of Americans who had
been in Wuhan as the outbreak worsened arrived in California on two evacuation
flights arranged by the United States government. The 12th case of the
coronavirus in the United States was confirmed on Wednesday.
Amid all the gloom, scientists in China
provided a glimmer of hope this week. Chinese researchers reported preliminary
success with a new approach for treating the coronavirus.
The researchers combined Arbidol, an
antiviral drug used in Russia and China for treating influenza, with Darunavir,
the anti-H.I.V. drug, for treating patients with the coronavirus, according to Changjiang
News, a state-backed newspaper in Wuhan.
The researchers did not say how many patients
had been treated with the combination therapy, and it could be too soon to
assess its effectiveness. The findings have not been reviewed by outside
experts.
Reporting was contributed by Austin Ramzy,
Elaine Yu and Alexandra Stevenson from Hong Kong, and Sui-Lee Wee from
Singapore. Wang Yiwei and Amber Wang contributed research.
