3 April 2020, NIICE Commentary 3902
Zhang Sheng
When the Coronavirus epidemic first broke out in Wuhan approximately two months ago, Western media and politicians were simply seeing this epidemic as ‘China’s affair’ and were busy turning this natural disaster into a weapon against the legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. They tried portraying the epidemic as something ’caused’ by Chinese government spreading lots of misinformation and even intentional lies in order to demonize China and the Communist Party of China. The West, meanwhile did not use these two months to better prepare themselves for the epidemic. According to the World Health Organisation, by 3 April, the US had more than 250 thousand confirmed cases and Italy, Germany and Spain with more confirmed cases than China. The Coronavirus epidemic, unlike what many Western politicians and corporate media hoped for, did not cause the so-called ‘collapse’ of China but instead posing fundamental challenges to the West itself, including its governance, political ideals, state capacities, and most importantly its’ citizens’ survival. China also demonstrated that it is certainly one of the state that performed the best while handling the Coronavirus epidemic, compared to Western democracies.
Lessons from China
There is a lot for them to learn from Socialist China. First, and the most basic thing the Western democracies must learn from China is that they should actually care about the lives of people and stop using their ‘election myths’ as the excuse of their inefficient and tardy solutions. In a domestic debate last month, disagreeing with other Chinese scholars’ argument, “Chinese government is acting exceptionally responsible when confronting the natural disasters”, Qin Hui, a Chinese scholar from Tsinghua University asked, “Which country in the world would not try to fight against the natural disasters as their incumbent responsibility?”. Qin Hui probably could never have imagined that his words would be proven wrong very soon by the United Kingdom, one of the most affluent countries of the West. The Boris Johnson administration ridiculously came up with the concept of so-called ‘herd immunity,’ basically referring that the British government would refuse to actively combat the COVID-19 as China and the other states have done. Similarly, several US politicians, including Donald Trump himself, said that “we cannot suspend the economy to save everyone infected.” Such irresponsible actions of putting the economy before lives of the people is beyond comprehension to the Chinese.
In Western democracies, there is an interesting myth, “As long as there are elections and multi-party system, this country should be regarded as a ‘democracy’ and this regime would represent the interests of the people”. Therefore, this election myth is being used by countries like UK and the US, doing terrible in containment of the epidemic, as their excuse basically saying “our government does not need to be responsible for its lack of capacity because it is elected by the people”. What people fail to pay attention to, however, are the severe class inequalities existing in those states and the varying degree of influence of the virus on different classes of people. In the UK, for example, the government was performing passively and wanted to use the so-called ‘herd immunity’ to evade responsibility, telling its people that UK will not test those with mild symptoms. Ironically, with only mild symptoms Prince Charles and Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, were tested and received the best treatment. Similar was the case in the US, the rich and the famous, such as Hollywood movie stars and NBA basketball players, were the first group of people receiving testing and medical treatment while the common people did not receive massive testing until recently. Therefore, people living in Western countries must give up this ‘election myths’ and realize that the legitimacy of their government should not be only based on Bourgeois democratic elections, but more importantly on government’s efforts to enhance the living standards of the people.
Second insight of China’s efforts for Western countries is the importance of mass mobilization and strong executive enforcement. When China shut down all the transportation of Wuhan and blocked the city, it criticized China for so-called ‘overreacting and violating human rights.’ Reality has now demonstrated that China’s blocking of Hubei province was a very wise decision. By blocking Hubei, China not only prevented the Coronavirus from spreading to the rest of China, but, most importantly, also was able to collect all the resources nationwide and concentrate all of the medical resources of China into Hubei. This is why the epidemic was controlled and eliminated in Hubei in such a short time. In contrary, Western countries lack such a strong executive enforcement and mass mobilization, leading the disease spread into their entire region. In Italy, for example, local ‘free press’ newspaper published the time of blocking the city in advance without the permission of the government, causing people living in the Northern area to escape to other places in panic, which brought the Coronavirus in all the provinces of Italy.
Third, the West should learn from China about collective and stable governance system. When the novel Coronavrius was hitting China, there was some degree of inter-province conflicts going on as provincial leaders arbitrarily only think of their province’s own interests without enough consideration of national interests. The central government of China, however, quickly criticized such a wrong mentality and intervened with plans, distributed resources, and proceed with national plans to save Hubei. In the US, however, the federal government and state government are still in useless partisan quarrels regardless of the fact that there are already more than 250 thousand confirmed cases. In a situation like this, macro-level planning and nationwide regulations are necessary.
Last, but not the least, Western media and politicians should introspect about themselves rather than blaming other countries for their poor performance. Certain US politicians insists to use the derogatory word ‘Chinese virus’ and the US diplomats have even requested the UN Security Council to write the words saying that Coronavirus ‘originated in Wuhan’ into the joint statement of the Council. Many high-ranked officials in the US also started to blame China for so-called ‘covering up’ in the early stage of the epidemic. Such blame sounds absurd as well. Why do they blame China for the so-called maximum three weeks of ‘delayed response’ while the West literally wasted minimum two months period? Shouldn’t one in the West ask their own governments about what it did in the past two months rather than simply blaming another country? One must realize the fact that the two months that China suffered alone, letting them to prepare for the epidemic is a favor done by China to the West.
The Coronavirus epidemic crisis should be a mirror warning for the West about the limitations of Western democracies. Reality has demonstrated that Western democracy is never the so-called ‘end of human history,’ but a highly limited and inadequate system which needs reforms and revisions. On the Coronavirus issue, Western democracies have a lot to learn from Socialist China, and this is not the only and will not be the last issue that the they need to learn from Socialist states.
