The Coronavirus Outbreak: How Democratic Taiwan Outperformed Authoritarian China.
Taiwan’s example proves that the free flow of information is the best treatment for the coronavirus outbreak.

The novel strain of coronavirus (officially dubbed COVID-19) that originated in Wuhan, China has spread to almost 30 countries, including regional neighbors like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and countries as far away as the United States, Canada, and Brazil. As of February 26, more than 81,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide, and the death toll has surpassed 2,700, mostly in China. The epicenter of the virus crisis, China, has been suffering socially and economically not only on account of the virus, but also because of the Chinese government’s problematic policies.

The Chinese government has been working to tackle the coronavirus outbreak by using multiple measures to contain the spread of the virus as well as information about the outbreak. Most famously, the government imposed an extreme quarantine in Wuhan on January 23, which is still in place over a month later. Many cities in Hubei province and elsewhere in China have also implemented lockdowns or restrictions while cases of infection continue to increase.

Besides these measures in the physical world, the Chinese government has attempted to quarantine discussion of the epidemic in the realm of public opinion. From the first appearance of the new virus last December to the lockdown of massive cities in mid-January, the Chinese authorities chose to restrict public access to the information about the epidemic by silencing people, most famously the whistleblower Doctor Li Wenliang. In the early stages of the outbreak, the Chinese government issued a statement asserting that “the disease is preventable and controllable,” and announcements sent by Chinese officials to World Health Organization (WHO) office in Beijing claimed that there was no evidence of the disease being transmitted between humans.

But the Chinese scientists writing in The Lancet medical journal later revealed that the first patient known to have contracted the novel coronavirus had no link to the Wuhan seafood market that the Chinese government pointed to as the source of the outbreak. This would suggest that the virus all along was spreading via human-to-human transmission – and that the government was lying to the public from the very beginning of this catastrophe.

Chinese news outlet Caixin covered the story of Dr. Li Wenliang, who became famous after being detained for posting about the new virus online. Li later died of the coronavirus himself, inspiring rare public anger against China’s censorship system. “There should be more than one voice in a healthy society,” Li told Caixin. When his death was reported, Chinese social media platforms were flooded with netizens’ anger and calls for freedom of speech. It seemed for a moment that the Chinese media and civil society had won more space for free speech, granted by the Chinese government as a safety valve for the pressure building from the bottom up.

But in fact, the central government began tightening its media and online controls soon, after a short period of tolerance. In February 2020, two Chinese citizen journalists disappeared after continuously reporting stories about the outbreak and posted them online. The Chinese government then expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters, taking advantage of accusations of racism over an editorial headline. In the meantime, China’s top cyber regulator required online technology companies to “create a good online atmosphere” for fighting the virus, and many social media apps and accounts were removed because of their posts of so-called harmful content. The Chinese propaganda department guided the domestic media to cover only positive stories on the coronavirus crisis relief work being done by Chinese authorities. The central government even dispatched journalists to the center of outbreak to accomplish this mission.

Whether China is stepping up propaganda or strengthening media and cyber controls, its primary goal is to maintain regime stability and social control, not to contain the virus outbreak.

On the contrary, Taiwan, a country that has been excluded from the WHO for decades thanks to China’s political pressure, has demonstrated that the better way to contain the coronavirus is not to quarantine news about epidemic, but to make it easier and more convenient for people to access relevant information………..