[The Communist Party’s success in
reclaiming the narrative has proved to the world its ability to rally the
people to its side, no matter how stumbling its actions might be.]
By Li Yuan
Then, as the blows landed faster
than the Chinese propaganda machine seemingly could handle, a number of
liberal-minded Chinese began to think the unthinkable. Perhaps this tragedy
would impel the Chinese people to push back. After decades of thought control
and worsening censorship, perhaps this was the moment that the world’s largest
and most powerful propaganda machine would crack.
It wasn’t.
A year later, the party’s control
of the narrative has become absolute. In Beijing’s telling, Wuhan stands not as
a testament to China’s weaknesses but to
its strengths. Memories of the horrors of last year seem to be fading, at
least judging by what’s online. Even moderate dissent gets shouted down.
People in China should be bowing
their heads this week in memory of those who suffered and died. Instead, the
China internet is afire over the scandal of
a Chinese actress and her surrogate babies, a tabloid controversy egged on by
Chinese propaganda.
Anyone looking for lessons about
China in the coming years needs to understand the consequences of what happened
in 2020. The tragedy showed Beijing has the ability to control what people in
China see, hear and think to a degree that surpasses even what pessimists
believed. During the next crisis — whether it be disaster, war or financial
crisis — the party has shown it has the tools to rally the people, no matter
how ham-handedly Beijing deals with it.
This week I looked through my
Chinese social media timelines and screenshots from a year ago. I was shocked
by how many posts, articles, photos and videos have been removed. I was also
surprised to remember the sense of hope at that moment despite intense anger
and grief.
The shift was especially palpable
the night that Dr. Li Wenliang, who was silenced after warning of the outbreak
in late 2019, died of
the virus.
That night, numerous Chinese people
waged what amounted to an online
revolt. They posted videos of the “Les Misérables” song “Do You Hear the
People Sing?” They shared one of Dr. Li’s quotes repeatedly: “A healthy society
should not have just one voice.”
Even one of China’s propaganda
directives warned that Dr. Li’s death was an “unprecedented
challenge.” Young people told me that the official news media had
lost credibility.
One of my followers on Weibo, the
Chinese social media platform, apologized for attacking me before. I used to
think that people like you were evil, he wrote. Now, he added, I know that we
were fooled.
A middle-age intellectual told me
that he expected the population of liberal-minded Chinese people — those who
want greater freedom from Beijing’s controls — to expand from his estimate of 5
percent to 10 percent of the total population to 30 percent to 40 percent.
As these hopes rose, others tried
to tamp down enthusiasm. One political scientist guessed the share of
liberal-minded Chinese internet users would shrink, not grow. In three months,
she predicted, the Chinese public would be celebrating the glorious victory
over the outbreak under the leadership of the great Communist government.
Unfortunately, she was correct.
To reclaim the narrative in the
early days of the pandemic, as my colleagues have reported, the Chinese
government began a tremendous behind-the-scene effort to make sure that the
censors took control at even the most local level. They listened and read just
about everything people posted. Then the censors either addressed the problems
or silenced the dissenters. Chinese officials say the police investigated or
otherwise dealt with more than 17,000 people who
they said had fabricated or spread fake pandemic-related information.
After 11 weeks, the lockdown in
Wuhan ended. By the summer, a photo of a crowded Wuhan swimming pool appeared
on the home pages of many websites around the world. China emerged as a success
story while the infection cases and death tolls in the United States and many
other Western countries skyrocketed. The contrast made the effectiveness of the
party’s strong hand an
easy sell.
The Chinese Communist Party has a
long history of controlling history. In the United States, historical
narratives shift and
compete, leading to arguments and sometimes
even violence, but constantly illuminating
new perspectives and bringing greater understanding of what underpins
the national identity. In China, by contrast, the government has successfully
taught its people that the country is nearly ungovernable unless a strong hand
controls the narrative.
The Communist Party has strict
narratives about its most serious mistakes, including the Great Leap Forward,
the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Immediately after
the Cultural Revolution, the so-called scar literature — memoir-style novels by
those who suffered during that troubled time — became a popular genre. The
party quickly realized the danger of letting the public share its individual
traumas and banned the books.
Under Xi Jinping, the party has
become even less tolerant of unorthodox historical ideas. In 2016, Yanhuang
Chunqiu, a monthly history magazine in which moderate-minded retired
officials published articles, was forced to surrender its editorial power to
the authorities.
The narrative about the current
pandemic is no exception. Journalists, writers and bloggers whose portrayals of
the outbreak differ from the official version have been jailed, disappeared or
silenced.
Fang Fang, a Wuhan-based novelist,
became the most vilified figure
on the Chinese internet in 2020. Her crime? Documenting her lockdown
experiences in an apolitical account in an online diary.
People online call her a liar, a
traitor, a villain and an imperialist dog. They accuse her of maligning the
government and causing the Chinese people to lose face in the world by
publishing an English translation of her diary in the United States. One man
called on the government to investigate her for the crime of subverting the
state power. One high-ranking medical scientist chastised her for lacking
patriotic emotions.
No publisher is willing or able to
publish her works in China. The social media posts and articles that support
her are often censored. A few people who spoke up for her publicly were
punished, including a literature professor in Wuhan who lost her Communist Party
membership and her right to teach.
“I think Fang Fang wrote about what
happened,” said Amy Ye, the organizer of a volunteer group for disabled people
in Wuhan. “In fact, I don’t think she included the most serious situations. Her
diary is very moderate. I don’t understand why even something like that
couldn’t be tolerated.”
This demand for a single narrative
carries risks. It silences those who might warn the government before it does
something foolish, like stumble into a conflict or interfere with China’s
economic growth machine.
It also conceals the true feelings
of the Chinese people. On the street, in person, most Chinese will be happy to
tell you what’s on their minds, perhaps in exhaustive details. But China became
a more opaque place in 2020. Online censorship became even harsher. Few Chinese
people are willing to take the risks of speaking to Western news media. Beijing
expelled many American journalists, including those at The New York Times.
This single narrative also means
that people who don’t fit into it risk getting left behind.
Ms. Ye, the Wuhan volunteer group
organizer, doesn’t believe that Wuhan could claim a victory over the
pandemic. “My whole world has changed, and it will probably never go back to
what it used to be,” she said.
She’s still struggling with
depression and the fear of getting out of her apartment. An outgoing person
before the pandemic, she has attended only one social gathering since the end
of the lockdown in April.
“All of a sudden we were locked up
at home for many days. So many people passed away. But nobody was held
accountable,” she said. “I would probably feel better if someone could
apologize that they didn’t do their job.”
“I can’t forget the pain,” she
said. “It’s engraved in my bones and my heart.”