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Wall Street Journal - China Strains to Stamp Out Coronavirus Criticisms at Home

Beijing takes steps to shape narrative after negative comments over government’s response to deadly outbreak keep circulating on social media.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told authorities to ‘strengthen the guidance of public opinions’ over the coronavirus outbreak.

By Lingling Wei

January28, 2020

BEIJING—Chinese President Xi Jinping built up what many consider to be the world’s most sophisticated censorship machine to control public debate. Now that system is being put to the test as authorities try to dictate the narrative around the viral outbreak appearing across the country.

With criticism of the government spreading on social media, Mr. Xi has repeatedly instructed authorities to “strengthen the guidance of public opinions”—language seen as a call for censorship in Communist Party-speak.

State media outlets have been told to publish only information released through official channels, Chinese journalists say. They have also been instructed to focus on promoting “positive energy” and to avoid any critical reporting of officialdom, they say.

Social-media posts are being deleted, including comments calling out the government for failing to contain the virus or questioning official data related to the disease. Censors appear to have also targeted posts describing the predicament of people stuck in places that have been closed off due to the respiratory virus, a new type of coronavirus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Yet negative messages continue to get through. In one case, social-media users have circulated comments from a letter to Wuhan’s government from lawyers who questioned its decision to briefly detain eight people for allegedly spreading false information after they were among the first to raise concerns about the virus.

“Exactly who is right and who is wrong? That matters to the public’s right to know,” said the letter, parts of which continue to appear on WeChat, a popular messaging app. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one of the two lawyers who wrote the letter, Shang Manqiang, based in Wuhan, said: “If Hubei people must die, we should die knowing the reason.” Many cities in Hubei, a central Chinese province of which Wuhan is the capital, have been put on lockdown as the outbreak spreads.

Elsewhere, users of social media have replaced the Chinese term for “coronavirus” with “government official-shaped virus”—which sounds the same in Mandarin—to mock what they see as a fumbling response from the state.

Critics say the clampdown marks a reversal from earlier in the crisis, when officials drew praise from international authorities for being more transparent in sharing health information with them than during the early days of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, outbreak, 17 years ago.

“Having realized just how serious this is, and how potentially destabilizing it is for the Party, the Party is now scrambling to fully mobilize resources to tackle the crisis,” said a note in China Neican, a China-focused newsletter coedited by Adam Ni, a China researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney. “Ultimately, the Chinese people are likely to judge the Party harshly despite the Party’s efforts at narrative control.”

At a meeting on Sunday, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, said its goal is to create a “good environment” for the government’s fight against the epidemic, according to a statement posted on its website.

Beijing officials say there is a genuine desire to promote accurate information and block out false reports that could increase panic.

“We adhere to openness and transparency, release timely the development of the epidemic and the progress with its prevention and control, and actively respond to concerns,” the Information Office of China’s State Council said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. On Monday, the information office said, the cabinet-level National Health Commission started to hold a daily press conference to better inform the public.

Still, many residents remain angry with the government, which some say underplayed the threat from a disease that has infected more than 4,500 people and killed at least 106. The fact that criticism keeps appearing on social media—despite China’s far-reaching censorship machine—speaks to the challenge that Beijing faces in maintaining stability as fear and frustration spread.

Some say the criticism could force the government to be more responsive to the public if it keeps piling up and breaking through the censorship. “Even an authoritarian government needs to take into account public opinions,” said one editor at the official Xinhua News Agency.

Mr. Xi issued his instruction to better guide public opinions on Jan. 20 as part of his directive to authorities on how to prevent the virus’s spread. During a meeting of top leaders on Sunday, Mr. Xi repeated that message as a way to bolster “social confidence” in the government’s ability to fight the epidemic.

Beijing’s challenge is apparent in the case of Zhang Ouya, a senior reporter at the state-controlled Hubei Daily in Wuhan.

On Jan. 24, a day after Beijing made the unprecedented decision to lock down Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, Mr. Zhang took to Weibo to call for the replacement of Wuhan’s government, which some citizens have said was slow to respond when the virus was first discovered late last year.

“Wuhan must immediately have a change of guard!” Mr. Zhang wrote. A leader “as fierce as” Wang Qishan —China’s vice president and the leader of the effort to fight SARS in the early 2000s—should be put at the helm, he wrote.

Mr. Zhang’s Weibo post went viral. Soon afterward, his employer, the Hubei Daily Media Group, told him to delete it and sent a letter of apology to the Wuhan government, according to people familiar with the matter.

The letter, viewed by the Journal, said Mr. Zhang’s action “has disturbed the current effort to control the epidemic and made various levels of the leadership uncomfortable.” The company pledged to better monitor employees and to spread only information of “positive energy.”

Officials at the Hubei Daily Media Group couldn’t be reached for comment. Reached by phone, Mr. Zhang said his Weibo post, now deleted, “represents only his own opinions.” He declined to comment further.

As they try to crack down on information deemed unfavorable to the government, authorities are trying to open up more official channels for the public to vent and to promote messages endorsed by the leadership. The State Council, China’s cabinet, since late last week has been letting people submit information via its website on any perceived official misconduct during the outbreak.

Still, a recent complaint posted on the website about how some health officials in Wuhan might have delayed reporting the number of infected cases was taken down soon after it started to circulate on social media.

Criticism also became sensitive after a press conference held Sunday by the provincial government of Hubei. During the briefing, which was intended to update the public on the province’s effort to control the epidemic, the mayor of Wuhan wore his medical mask upside down. The Hubei governor misspoke several times regarding the number of masks produced in the province.

One social-media user, whose account is dubbed “Boiling the Realm,” questioned the event.

“The press conference couldn’t have been more high-profile given the current special situation,” the user wrote. “But it became such an opportunity for the public to complain about the capabilities of government officials. It couldn’t have been stranger than this.”

The post was deleted a few hours after it was widely circulated in Chinese social media. Efforts to reach the person behind the account, which was registered by a male user, were unsuccessful.

Officials in the city of Wuhan and Hubei province declined to comment.

—Bingyan Wang, Kersten Zhang and Wenxin Fan contributed to this article.