With the coronavirus crisis, the credibility and even the legitimacy of the Communist, one-party regime are on the line. The Chinese have not forgotten the mismanaged SARS crisis in 2002/03 and the milk and baby milk scandal in 2008 which — officially — cost the lives of six children while 300,000 got sick.
The 2008 the food safety scandal got huge because the corrupt, intolerant and intransparent Communist, one-party regime ignorend early warning signs — as was the case in the SARS crisis which, according to estimates, cost China some 41 billion euro.
In 2018, the Communist, one-party leader Xi Jingping became China’s dictator for life. Once you have all the power, whatever happens, may fall back on you. It is in Xi Jingping’s and the Communist Party’s best interest to get the coronavirus crisis under control as quickly as possible.
Unlike in the 2002/03 SARS crisis, after the coronavirus break-out in 2019, the Communist Party was more transparent in its communication and acted swiftly. The goal is to avoid a pandemic. In 1918/19, the so-called Spanish flu cost the lives of an estimated 50 million people in a world with an overall population of 1.8 billion people. One in thirty-six people died!
Furthermore, a pandemic would be catastrophic not only for China’s, but also the world’s economy. In 2003, during the SARS epidemic, Communist China represented some 8% of the world’s GDP [added on Feb. 12, 2020: several sources state that, in 2003, China represented only 4% of the world’s GDP]. In 2019/20, Xi Jinping’s China represents some 20% of the world’s GDP.
Xi Jinping wants to “bring back” Hong Kong and Taiwan into the empire of Communist China, which reminds Germans of the Nazi slogan bring the Germans of Eastern Europe back into the empire (Heim ins Reich). In the case of China, this means mean bring the Chinese back into the empire of the Middle Kingdom (heim ins Reich der Mitte). Apart from the historic inaccuracy of this claim regarding Taiwan, the people in Hong Kong and Taiwan recently told Xi Jinping what they thought about his “proposal”: NOTHING.
In the November 2019 Hong Kong local elections — the only free and fair elections in this special administrative zone —, a record 71% of voters went to the polls. The Pro-Democracy candidates won over 85% of the seats in the Hong Kong local district councils. They went from 126 to 388 out of the 452 seats contested in the local elections. The Pro-Beijing candidates suffered unprecented losses.
In the January 2020 Taiwanese general election, the Taiwanese people showed the Communist regime on the mainland what they thought of their reunification plan based on the Hong Kong idea of “one country, two systems”: They re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen with 57.1%, her DDP ended up again with a majority in parliament.
At least in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the credibility and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist, one-party regime is between limited to a clear minority and ZERO.
[P.S. added on February 2, 2020 at 23:53 German time: I wrote above that the Chinese government acted swiftly. In fact, it acted just a little bit swifter than in 2002/3. But again, at first, the regime tried to cover-up, wasting precious time].
[Added on February 3, 2020 at 15:12 German time: Communist China communicated on Sunday evening, February 2, that the mainland death toll had reached 361. In comparison, in the entire 2002/03 SARS pandemic officially 349 people had died in Communist China].
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Photo on top: Xi Jingping, the Chinese dictator for life and Communist, one-party leader in 2016. Cropped from a photo showing Xi Jinping with Narendra Modi. Date 23 June 2016. Photo copyright: Press Information Bureau of the Government of India.
Article added on February 2, 2020 at 16:20 Swiss time.
