{"id":38733,"date":"2020-02-27T16:04:59","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T22:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=38733"},"modified":"2020-02-27T16:04:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T22:04:59","slug":"38733","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=38733","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coronavirus Outbreak: How Democratic Taiwan Outperformed Authoritarian China.<\/a>
\nTaiwan\u2019s example proves that the free flow of information is the best treatment for the coronavirus outbreak.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s problematic policies.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0quarantine in Wuhan<\/a>\u00a0on 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.<\/p>\n

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,\u00a0the Chinese authorities chose to restrict<\/a>\u00a0public 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 \u201cthe disease is preventable and controllable,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

But the Chinese scientists writing in\u00a0The Lancet<\/em>\u00a0medical journal later revealed that the first patient known to have contracted the novel coronavirus had\u00a0no link to the Wuhan seafood market<\/a>\u00a0that 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 \u2013 and that the government was lying to the public from the very beginning of this catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Chinese news outlet\u00a0Caixin<\/em>\u00a0covered the story of Dr. Li Wenliang<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0who 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\u2019s censorship system. \u201cThere should be more than one voice in a healthy society,\u201d Li told\u00a0Caixin<\/em>. When his death was reported, Chinese social media platforms were\u00a0flooded with netizens\u2019 anger\u00a0<\/a>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,\u00a0granted by the Chinese government<\/a>\u00a0as a safety valve for the pressure building from the bottom up.<\/p>\n

But in fact, the central government began\u00a0tightening its media and online control<\/a>s<\/u>\u00a0soon, after a short period of tolerance. In February 2020,\u00a0two Chinese citizen journalists disappeared<\/a>\u00a0after continuously reporting stories about the outbreak and posted them online. The Chinese government then\u00a0expelled three\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reporters<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0taking advantage of accusations of racism over an editorial headline. In the meantime, China\u2019s top\u00a0cyber regulator required<\/a>\u00a0online technology companies to \u201ccreate a good online atmosphere\u201d 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\u00a0dispatched journalists<\/a>\u00a0to the center of outbreak to accomplish this mission.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Taiwan, a country that has been excluded from the WHO for decades thanks to China\u2019s 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………..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coronavirus Outbreak: How Democratic Taiwan Outperformed Authoritarian China. Taiwan\u2019s 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 … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-medicine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38734,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733\/revisions\/38734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}