Public outcry over Wuhan coronavirus leads to blame game in China

Backlash against China’s official response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has left local officials and the central government scrambling to offset responsibility. While the central government has accused local officials of being “inefficient”, the local government has reminded the public it is blocked from sharing information in real-time because of a heavily centralized system of information control. Meanwhile close to 40,000 people have been infected in China and over a thousand have died. 

First, blame the Chinese New Year 

Despite receiving notice of the deadly illness in early December 2019, Chinese officials took over six weeks to openly admit that the public health situation had reached crisis levels.

A widely reported 20 January visit to Wuhan from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, made a public acknowledgment of the gravity of the outbreak. This visit became controversial as it happened just two days after the local Wuhan government held a massive public banquet for the Chinese New Year attended by over 40,000 people despite full knowledge of the risks. 

As China health expert and author of Governing Health in Contemporary China Huang Yanzhong explains in a podcast: 

Then blame the local government 

After Li Keqiang’s visit to Wuhan, the Chinese government shifted to a well-known tactic of blaming and firing members of the local government in order to maintain the prestige of the central government, and above all, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The first one to take the blame was Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang, who tried to make excuses for the now infamous banquet:

The reason why the Baibuting community continued to host the banquet this year was based on the previous judgment that the spread of the epidemic was limited between humans, so there was not enough warning. 

As per the expected script, Zhou, along with governor Wang Xiaodong and Wuhan Party Secretary Ma Guoqiang from Hubei province (where Wuhan is located) also gave a press conference on 26 January. The press event turned into a major disaster after both officials displayed an utter lack of knowledge about the crisis, and made blunt statements that increased the sense of panic among the public. 

First, governor Wang fumbled three times when answering a simple question regarding the number of masks available for the local population. He decreased the number of local mask production from 10.8 billion to 1.08 billion and finally 1.08 million. The video of the press conference was widely shared on Chinese social media and Twitter:

Hubei province governor Wang Xiaodong on the evening of January 26 during the live broadcast of  press conference on the prevention of the new type of pneumonia epidemic speaking about the number of masks produced in Wuhan. First he said the annual output was 10.8 billion pieces. After a while, he said it was 1.8 billion, and then he changed again to 1.08 million.

The links can also be replayed after 47 minutes and 59 minutes.

I'm going crazy after watching it