China’s COVID19 mishandling is its “Chernobyl Moment,” said its international critics

Over the last few weeks, China and the US have been accusing each other several times over the COVID19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Chinese scholars and western intellectuals have initiated a fierce argument on the same topic through open letters. Andreas Fulda, a German professor who initiated the international open letters, said he wants the international community to know that the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian governance is the real cause of the COVID19 pandemic.

While Beijing and Washington were accusing each other over the coronavirus outbreak over the last few weeks, a new battle was initiated by a group of Chinese scholars and western intellectuals through open letters. On April 2, a group of 100 Chinese scholars published an open letter titled “An Open Letter to the People of the United States From 100 Chinese Scholars” on the Diplomat.

In the letter, the Chinese scholars accused many critical voices around the world of “politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic.” “Facing the most dangerous infectious disease in a century, these criticisms help neither China, the U.S., nor the world to curb the spread of the virus,” wrote the Chinese scholars in the open letter.

“Political bickering does nothing to contribute to the healthy development of Sino-U.S. relations, nor will it help the people of the world to rationally and accurately understand and cope with the pandemic.”

The Chinese scholars emphasized that at a time when the exact source of the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been determined, questions about the origin of the virus is “unimportant” while finger pointing is demeaning and hurtful to everyone.

“In the end we will all respect the final determination of scientists,” wrote the Chinese scholars. “Like many other countries, China is a victim of the virus, but also a success story overcoming it, and it is willing to work with people of other countries to stop the spread of the pandemic.”

The international community responded

That open letter attracted a lot of attention, especially from international scholars who have long been focusing on issues related to China. Some of them believe that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian governance style is the main cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Andreas Fulda, an Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham, initiated a counter-open letter to call on the international community to pay more attention to the threats that comes with the CCP’s policies.

Fulda said that based on his observation over the last two decades, there has been a general lack of knowledge about the way the CCP operates among western policy makers, media professionals and even some China specialists.

“After the end of the Cold War, many academically well-trained western elites assumed that a clash of political systems and the struggle between competing ideologies was a thing of the past,” Fulda said. “Many hoped that China would change through commercial engagement after joining the WTO in 2001, but 19 years later, the international community has to learn the hard way that China’s political system has not evolved in a liberal-democratic direction. It actually regressed, and the COVID-19 pandemic is the catastrophic evidence of that.”

In an open letter titled “The Communist Party’s rule by fear endangers Chinese citizens — and the world,” Fulda described the pandemic as China’s “Chernobyl moment,” and said the regime that so many people have tolerated or supported over the last few decades is the cause of the pandemic that is threatening the whole world now.

He highlighted how the Chinese government tried to silence whistleblowers like Dr. Ai Fan and Dr. Li Wen-Liang, while citizen journalists like Chen Qiu-Shih, Fan Bin and Li Zehua were all forced into disappearance after they tried to share sensitive situation in Wuhan with the rest of the world. The whereabouts of the three citizen journalists remain unknown.

“The global pandemic forces us all to confront an inconvenient truth: by politicizing all aspects of life including people’s health, continued autocratic one-party rule in the People’s Republic of China has endangered everyone,” Fulda wrote in the open letter.

“Rather than trusting the CCP’s intentions and accepting establishment academics’ uncritical approval of the party-state’s policies, we should pay greater attention to the voices of what can be termed ‘unofficial’ China. These independent-minded academics, doctors, entrepreneurs, citizen journalists, public interest lawyers and young students no longer accept the CCP’s rule by fear. Neither should you.”

So far, more than 100 international scholars, politicians and activists, including members of the European Parliament and think tank scholars from Europe and Canada, have all signed the open letter initiated by Fulda.

In response to the international open letter, China’s state-run tabloid Global Times wrote a piece that described it as an attempt to peddle “hate by smearing China in an attempt to steal the spotlight.”

Fulda: We are in solidarity with the Chinese people

Fulda points out that as the CCP has a long history of manipulating the Chinese society through the United Front approach, that often leaves the international society with the binary choice of either being “China’s uncritical friend” or being viewed as “enemy of the people.”

“Since outsiders are persistently painted as potential enemies of the Chinese people it is very hard for outsiders to build trust networks,” Fulda said.

Having conducted research about China’s Foreign NGO Law from 2017 to 2019, Fulda said one of the most disheartening findings of his research is that the Foreign NGO Law destroys the trust network between European and Chinese civil societies, which usually took individuals in both societies 10 to 20 years to build.

Fulda thinks that the only way for the relationship between the West and China to become friendly, the CCP needs to stop suppressing Chinese citizens’ voices through the rule of fear.

“As outsiders, we are willing to have a dialogue with the party-state, but it must be free from censorship and be truly open-ended,” Fulda said. “We are also willing to work with China, but the choice of partners and topics must be free from party-state control and coercion. And we also want to let the good people of China know that we are standing in solidarity with the courageous and conscientious Chinese citizens who are willing to speak truth to power.”

Fulda hopes the open letter can help the international community to make clear distinction between the CCP and China’s civil society. “The open letter makes it very clear that besides ‘official China’, represented by the party-state, there is also the ‘unofficial China’, which is made up by independent-minded academics, doctors, entrepreneurs, citizen journalists, public interest lawyers and young students who no longer accept the CCP’s rule by fear,” Fulda said.

“Their individual voices are already forming a chorus. They demand nothing less than a critical evaluation of the impact of CCP policies on the lives of Chinese citizens and citizens around the world. We urge you to join them.”