Book excerpt: How the coronavirus pandemic exposed the danger of China's Great Firewall

Censors prevented early whistleblowers like Dr. Li Wenliang from getting the message out, with disastrous results

On the anniversary of coronavirus whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang’s first warnings, here is an edited excerpt from the (updated, expanded) paperback of The Great Firewall of China: How to build and control an alternative version of the internet (Zed/Bloomsbury, 2021). This is a long one, so Gmail and other apps may cut it off, click here to open in your browser.

Chapter 28: How the coronavirus pandemic exposed the danger of the Great Firewall 

The first censorship order was issued on 2 January 2020.¹ Weeks earlier, reports of an unidentified viral pneumonia had begun to emerge from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, sparking concern about a potential epidemic. In a directive issued by central Communist Party authorities to state media, editors were ordered not to engage in “baseless conjecture” and to “direct questions to the National Health Commission to prevent fake news reports from triggering mass panic.” Days later, another directive warned outlets to “strictly prohibit” the republishing or quoting of foreign reports on the virus, adding “do not hype or link to the 2003 SARS epidemic.”²

That epidemic, of severe acute respiratory syndrome, infected over eight thousand people and killed around seven hundred, mostly in China and other parts of East Asia. ³ It began in November 2002, when a number of cases of a novel coronavirus were detected in Foshan, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.⁴ The virus spread quickly throughout the region, and a team of medical experts sent to investigate the outbreak warned authorities, in a secret bulletin to the Ministry of Health in Beijing, that the virus was “highly infectious.”⁵ Despite this, local officials downplayed any dangers and tightly controlled reporting on the virus. The first newspaper article about SARS was in January 2003, by which point it was already reaching epidemic levels. Rather than raise the alarm however, the paper reassured readers that the dire crisis unfolding was “only a rumour.” It was not until the following month that the Ministry issued its first public announcement on the virus, and even that downplayed the situation, saying a “pneumonia-like illness” had sickened 305 people and killed five in Guangdong since the previous November.⁶ 

Provincial officials later admitted they were worried news of an epidemic could harm the economy, and might derail the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, during which millions of people criss-cross China, visiting family and, most importantly, spending heavily.⁷

Finally, on 8 April, Jiang Yanyong could take it no more. In a letter to western media, the retired military doctor outlined the true scale of the outbreak and blasted the authorities for covering it up. “A failure to disclose accurate statistics about the illness will only lead to more deaths,” Jiang wrote.⁸ By this point, the coverup was reaching breaking point. Jiang was hardly the only doctor who had seen hospital wards packed with patients, and more and more people were at least partly aware of the scale of the epidemic simply by dint of being touched by it, via an infected family member, friend, or coworker. On 13 April, Premier Wen Jiabao conceded that the SARS outbreak was “grave” and promised the government would “speak the truth” from then on.

Faced with the full might of the Chinese state and international health experts, SARS was soon reined in, and by 2004 the epidemic was over. Jiang was hailed as a hero, and the initial censorship and control of the narrative condemned as a deadly mistake. Blame was laid at the feet of provincial officials, particularly in Guangdong, who were accused of misleading the central government, a common refrain in incidents of national embarrassment, allowing the Party to take its pound of flesh without actually shaking its own grip on power.⁹ “Never again” became the watchword of the day, and some began to hope that the incident might lead to a wider relaxing of censorship, particularly as Hu and Wen courted international opinion in the run up to the 2008 Olympics, encouraging a brief flowering of dissent both online and off.¹⁰ Zhong Nanshan, one of the heroes in China’s fight against SARS, described it as a "turning point" for the nation, in which the whole country was forced “to pay attention to the livelihood of the people.”

In this light, it can be astonishing how much the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the 2020 pandemic, mirrored that which came before, potentially even right down to the source.

As in 2002, the virus emerged late in the year, and spread quickly, aided by cooler temperatures, lower humidity and more time spent inside.¹¹ It popped up weeks before the Lunar New Year travel period, increasing the urgency for containment and swift action, before the mass migration took it nationwide. But just as their counterparts in Guangdong had done, authorities in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province downplayed the danger and suppressed news of the outbreak, with disastrous consequences. 

Though the first case of what would later be designated SARS-CoV-2 was detected on 8 December 2019, it was not until 14 January 2020 that officials in Wuhan introduced any screening measures for the virus.¹² In the intervening period, a major meeting of the Hubei provincial Communist Party was held in the city, and more than forty thousand families were invited to attend a pre-Lunar New Year banquet in an attempt to set a world record. Life continued as normal in Wuhan, though some residents began wearing face masks outside due to rumours about a potential virus spreading.¹³

Speaking to state media about cases of “pneumonia” in the city, officials said these were limited, and denied there was any evidence of human-to-human transmission such as would be cause for alarm. Initially, national health officials repeated this assertion, with Wang Guangfa, a leading respiratory expert at Peking University and head of an inspection team sent from Beijing to Wuhan, telling state television that no hospital staff had been infected, suggesting human-to-human transmission was not occurring, and saying any further outbreak was “preventable and controllable.”¹⁴ Within days, Wang was himself diagnosed with the coronavirus. 

Even as cases were reported beyond China’s borders, and researchers in the United Kingdom estimated based on publicly available data that the initial outbreak had likely affected at least 1,700 in Wuhan alone, no new infections were confirmed in the city, leading people to ask darkly on social media, “does the virus only affect overseas travellers?” It was not until a second team from Beijing, this time led by Zhong Nanshan, the SARS hero, arrived in Wuhan, that the authorities acknowledged the true scale of the threat. In this they were prompted by a growing number of international cases and foreign scrutiny, and a statement by the WHO that there was evidence of “limited human-to-human transmission.”¹⁵

Throughout this period, the censors strictly controlled the narrative in state media and online. “Content related to the pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan must follow information issued by authoritative departments,” read one leaked censorship directive in early January.¹⁶ As the epidemic spread to Hong Kong that month, state media was ordered not to report on it, or the semi-autonomous city’s handling of the outbreak, apparently for fear of contrast with the still laggard response on the mainland.¹⁷ “Reminder: Relevant departments and regions will publish new information on the novel coronavirus epidemic situation,” read another leaked censorship order, issued on 19 January. “When republishing, strictly use content from official government bulletins, do not tamper with the headline, do not individually gather or compose news, do not hype or relate old text. Conjecture is strictly prohibited.”¹⁸

Those who pushed back against this censorship in an attempt to warn others of the potential danger were strictly punished. On 1 January, Wuhan police said they had taken "taken legal measures" against eight people who had recently "published and shared rumours online,” causing “adverse impacts on society."¹⁹

"The internet is not a land beyond the law,” a police statement said. “Any unlawful acts of fabricating, spreading rumours and disturbing the social order will be punished by police according to the law, with zero tolerance.” The arrests were approvingly reported by state media, which said “speculation” the virus in Wuhan was linked to SARS had “caused panic” online.²⁰

Whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang.

One of those briefly detained was Li Wenliang, a thirty-four-year-old ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital. Li had been questioned by police in late December after he warned friends in a medical school alumni group on WeChat, the tightly censored and surveilled messaging app, that a new virus spreading in the city was related to SARS.²¹ He had seen test results from one of the first patients indicating their illness had been caused by a coronavirus, and “wanted to remind my university classmates to be careful,” Li said later. But though he did not make this warning public, screenshots of Li’s message were soon shared online, where they briefly went viral before being censored. On 3 January, Li was called to a local police station and reprimanded for "spreading rumours online" and "severely disrupting social order.” He was forced to sign a statement acknowledging his "misdemeanour" and promising not to commit further "unlawful acts." 

Li returned to work, believing there was nothing he could do and unwilling to challenge the authorities further. “[Everything] has to adhere to the official line,” he told reporters in early February. "My family would worry sick about me, if I lose my freedom for a few days.” 

By this point, Li was himself a patient. He contracted the virus on 10 January, after treating a patient he didn’t realise was infected, and was hospitalised two days later. As the official narrative around the virus fell apart, Li’s condition worsened, and by the time he was free to talk to the media, he was gravely ill. Outrage grew as it emerged that far from “rumour mongers,” several of those detained were well-informed medical professionals. A call by President Xi Jinping to improve the timely release of information about the virus was seen as a green light for greater reporting on the epidemic, and some braver Chinese journalists began digging into the coverup, interviewing Li and other whistleblowers. Even China’s Supreme Court issued a rare criticism, saying in a commentary published online that “it might have been a fortunate thing for containing the new coronavirus, if the public had listened to this 'rumour' at the time, and adopted measures such as wearing masks, strict disinfection and avoiding going to the wildlife market.”

On Li’s Weibo account, where he had posted updates about his personal life and various other banal observations, tens of thousands of comments were left thanking him for trying to get the word out, and cheering on his recovery. "Dr Li, you're a good doctor with conscience. I hope you stay safe and sound," read one comment. “If Wuhan had paid attention to your warning back then and taken active preventive measures, where we stand now a month later could be a completely different picture."

Late in the evening of 6 February, a Thursday, Li succumbed to the virus. His death soon became another exercise in callous censorship, a clumsy microcosm of the initial coverup. Soon after Li had died, several state media outlets reported his passing, citing friends and doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital. This led to an outpouring of grief and rage online, which apparently sparked the censors to act. The reports were deleted, replaced by a statement from the hospital that efforts to resuscitate Li were underway. That claim appears to have been false, an effort to buy time not to revive Li, but to control the narrative around his death. Finally, in the early hours of Friday morning, the hospital issued a short statement confirming his death.²²

This artless attempt at damage control played out live in front of millions of people, many of whom had stayed up late refreshing social media for updates on his condition. "I knew you would post this in the middle of the night," one user wrote on Weibo in a widely-shared post. "You think we've all gone to sleep? No. We haven't." A hashtag demanding “freedom of speech" briefly trended, attracting hundreds of thousands of comments, before it was censored. "Countless young people will mature overnight after today: the world is not as beautiful as we imagined," another user wrote. "Are you angry? If any of us here is fortunate enough to speak up for the public in the future, please make sure you remember tonight's anger." It was a level of public fury and pushback that the censors had not experienced since the 2011 Wenzhou train crash, made all the worse by their own apparent involvement in the coverup. 

Had Li survived, it is likely he would have been feted by the government as a loyal whistleblower, one who only sought to bring to the central government’s attention the ill doings of subordinates in the provinces. In the months that followed, there was an attempt to co-opt him even in death: in April, Li was declared a martyr of the people along with thirteen other healthcare workers who died battling the virus.²³ But the anger and grief around his death remained hard for the authorities to control. On Weibo, Li’s final posts became a “wailing wall,” a place not only to commemorate him, but also to vent more generally, about the government’s handling of the pandemic, lost loved ones, the miseries and strictures of lockdowns, and fears for the future.²⁴ “I managed to get my emotions off my chest yesterday, and finally my strength has been restored,” one user wrote to Li. “Thank you for being my place of refuge.” Another said that “life is really not easy. I really want my husband to come back and be with me and our child. The epidemic has really gotten everyone into a state of anxiety. How are things for you over there? Perhaps you are able to meet up with my mum and grandparents. I really miss them.”²⁵

A similar pattern played out in posts by the Wuhan based writer Wang Fang, who — under the nom de plume Fang Fang — began writing regularly about her experiences during lockdown in early 2020, when the city was still the epicentre of the growing pandemic. Unlike Li however, Fang did not contract the virus, and her survival enabled her to become a more public critic of the government’s response than the doctor ever could be. 

“To my dear internet censors: You had better let the people of Wuhan speak out and express what they want to say! Once they get these things off their chests, they will feel a bit better,” she wrote in February. “We’ve already been locked down in quarantine for more than 10 days and have seen a lot of terrible things.”²⁶

Like Li, Fang fit a role that had been carved out previously, one of loyal critic. She largely confined her most biting comments for local officials, and made sure to praise efforts by the central government to provide relief and support for the people of Wuhan. But as efforts to contain the virus ramped up nationwide in the weeks following Li’s death, the brief flowering of dissent his passing had permitted ended. Journalists were recalled from Wuhan or ordered not to pursue investigative lines anymore, but instead to focus on the effective response and positive stories. 

Within months, the virus was effectively controlled within China, even as it continued to ravage worldwide, and regional flareups were met with quick and effective responses. But as China’s handling of the pandemic went from national embarrassment to a point of pride, domestic criticism of anything related to the coronavirus became verboten. Fang, once lauded in state media for her humanistic writing from the heart of the Wuhan lockdown, illustrating the great sacrifices the people of that city went through to get the initial epidemic under control, suddenly found herself attacked.²⁷  

Fang stopped her regular diary in March 2020, after the seventy-six-day Wuhan lockdown lifted. And while most of her posts remained online, some were censored, and the published collection was banned in China.²⁸ By this point, she had become a figure of hatred for many on the Chinese internet, her defenders either censored or cowed into compliance. In the geopolitical blame game of the pandemic, there was no room for domestic criticism. “The West smears us and wants to get together to demand sky-high compensation,” wrote one Weibo user. “Fang Fang passes the sword hilt to them to attack the nation.” Another blamed her for racist attacks against Chinese living abroad.²⁹

This was tragic not only for Fang, whose personal information was posted online, subjecting her to even more harassment and threats, but for China at large. Despite promises to the contrary, the lessons of the SARS epidemic were not learned when it came to censorship and transparency. While China’s slow response to the virus which emerged in late 2019 was driven in part by the same dithering and uncertainty seen in many other countries — an unwillingness to take the extreme measures that were ultimately needed to contain the pandemic — it is certain that the coverup in Wuhan cost vital days and weeks. Possibly a virus as infectious as SARS-CoV-2 might have broken through even speedy efforts to contain it, but the initial censorship, made possible by the Great Firewall, means we will never know if a global pandemic might have been stopped. Equally regrettable, the narrative around the coronavirus in China has become one not of failure and the value of transparency, but of a successful government response that saved millions of lives. While some of this may be true, any chance of reckoning with the system of censorship that helped beget this disaster, or of finally learning the lesson of SARS in time for the next pandemic, was squandered.

1. S. Beach, 'Minitrue Diary, January 2, 2020: Mystery Pneumonia And U.S. Trade’, China Digital Times, 8 September 2020 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/minitrue-diary-january-2-2020-mysterious-pneumonia-and-u-s-trade/

2. S. Wade, 'Minitrue Diary, January 4, 2020: Mystery Pneumonia, Murdered Doctor’s Funeral, Hk Official’s Replacement’, China Digital Times, 10 September 2020 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/minitrue-diary-january-4-2020-mystery-pneumonia-murdered-doctors-funeral-hk-officials-replacement/

3. J. Hollingsworth, 'A lot has changed since China's SARS outbreak 17 years ago. But some things haven’t’, CNN, 25 January 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/24/asia/china-sars-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

4. D. Feng et al, 'The SARS epidemic in mainland China: bringing together all epidemiological data’, Trop Med Int Health, November 2009, 14(Suppl 1): 4–13 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7169858/

5. P. Pan, ’Out of Mao’s Shadow’, Picador, 2009, p.202 

6. 'Timeline: SARS outbreak’, CNN, 24 April 2003 https://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/04/24/timeline.sars/

7. P. Pan, ’Out of Mao’s Shadow’, Picador, 2009, p.203

8. 'New SARS outbreak fears’, CNN, 9 April 2003 https://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/04/09/sars1110/index.html

9. P. Pan, ’Out of Mao’s Shadow’, Picador, 2009, p.218

10. J. Griffiths, 'Wuhan is the latest crisis to face China's Xi, and it's exposing major flaws in his model of control’, CNN, 24 January 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/23/asia/wuhan-china-coronavirus-sars-response-intl-hnk/index.html

11. S. Mallapaty, 'Why COVID outbreaks look set to worsen this winter’, Nature, 23 October 2020 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02972-4

12. J. Griffiths, 'Wuhan is the latest crisis to face China's Xi, and it's exposing major flaws in his model of control’, CNN, 24 January 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/23/asia/wuhan-china-coronavirus-sars-response-intl-hnk/index.html

13. Fang Fang, 'Wuhan Diary’, HarperCollins, 2020 

14. '国家医疗专家组专家：武汉不明原因肺炎病原已初步认定 目前总体可控’, CCTV, 11 January 2020 http://m.news.cctv.com/2020/01/11/ARTIrzgm68kbiIPwojpku1aL200111.shtml

15. N. Gan, 'China confirms new coronavirus can spread between humans’, CNN, 21 January 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/19/asia/china-coronavirus-spike-intl-hnk/index.html

16. 'Minitrue: Early Coronavirus Directives (January 2020)’, China Digital Times, 17 April 2020 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/04/minitrue-early-coronavirus-directives-january-2020/

17. J. Rudolph, 'Minitrue Diary, January 8 2020: Epidemic In Hong Kong’, China Digital Times, 15 September 2020 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/minitrue-diary-january-8-2020-epidemic-in-hong-kong/

18. J. Rudolph, 'Minitrue Diary, January 19, 2020: Unsavory Actors, Abe Congratulates Tsai, Coronavirus’, China Digital Times, 30 September 2020 https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/minitrue-diary-january-19-2020-unsavory-actors-abe-congratulates-tsai-coronavirus/

19. X. Yong and N. Gan, 'This Chinese doctor tried to save lives, but was silenced. Now he has coronavirus’, CNN, 4 February 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whistle-blower-intl-hnk/index.html

20. 'Health authority refutes SARS, MERS in pneumonia outbreak’, Global Times, 6 January 2020 https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1175808.shtml

21. X. Yong and N. Gan, 'This Chinese doctor tried to save lives, but was silenced. Now he has coronavirus’, CNN, 4 February 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whistle-blower-intl-hnk/index.html

22. J. Griffiths, 'China's censors tried to control the narrative on a hero doctor's death. It backfired terribly’, CNN, 7 February 2020 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/07/asia/china-doctor-death-censorship-intl-hnk/index.html

23. '14 people who died in fight against COVID-19 identified as martyrs’, Xinhua, 2 April 2020 http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/02/c_138941398.htm

24. Fang Fang, 'Wuhan Diary’, HarperCollins, 2020 

25. T. Baxter, 'Frozen in Wuhan’, Mekong Review, August 2020 https://mekongreview.com/frozen-in-wuhan/

26. Fang Fang, 'Wuhan Diary’, HarperCollins, 2020 

27. T. Liu, 'China’s Second Wave of Coronavirus Censorship Is Here’, Foreign Policy, 7 July 2020 https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/07/china-virus-censorship-death/

28. 'Wuhan lockdown diary effectively banned in China, says author labelled a “traitor”’, South China Morning Post, 22 July 2020 https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3094199/wuhan-lockdown-diary-effectively-banned-china-says-author

29. Y. Wang, 'In China, the “Great Firewall” Is Changing a Generation’, Politico, 1 September 2020 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/01/china-great-firewall-generation-405385