A citizen journalist who shined a light on Wuhan's plight may die in prison
npr.org
npr.org
I've been concerned lately that a lot of articles critical of China's government have comment sections filled with things like, "America is no better, just look at their prisons" or "Europe has no right to judge, look at how they've handled the migrant crisis", etc. Or, worse, accusing the authors of being xenophobic or racist only because they cast China in a poor light.
There seems to be an odd desire right now to ignore any injustices going on in other countries, in favor of critiquing Western nations. Or even downplaying and excusing foreign corruption, to try to highlight how bad Western corruption is. This sort of Victim Olympics does nothing to help the foreign human rights activists, such as Zhang Zhan, who are crying out to the world and begging for our attention.
China's corruption is a unique beast that has unique impacts on its victims. Journalists like Zhang Zhan have highlighted this and presented rock-solid evidence. I dearly hope the Western world can quit its culture war squabbles for long enough to listen and offer all possible aid. It's increasingly hard to hear their plight over the sound of the West tearing itself to pieces.
She probably will be saved. It's a lot of troubles if she would be harmed. All those will be blamed on CCP, and the lower officials who are handling the case in the frontline will be the scapegoat.
Everyone in the chain of command is incentives to ensure her safety.
But many in the West would want her to die. In order to denote the conflicts.
> Her videos shined a light in the chaotic darkness of the beginning of this pandemic.
Yep. But if you actually watched her video, most of them are actually herself speaking the darkness, seldom there is an actual scene of darkness caught on her camera.
I think she was mostly a very conscious person of the surrounding. But I highly doubt her news reporting skills and objectiveness.
> I've been concerned lately that a lot of articles critical of China's government have comment sections filled with things like, "America is no better, just look at their prisons" or "Europe has no right to judge, look at how they've handled the migrant crisis", etc.
Could you double check your statistics, and making sure that your impression was not exaggerated. And make sure that you are not siloed in some algorithm trap as well.
If you think about it, there is actually negligible amount of articles that are not critical of Chinese government. China is literally everyone's scapegoat for anything that is tangible for anyone to joke or divert the public's attention.
If you are seeing comments showing alternative views. That's a good thing! It's good not because they trust China. It's good because people are thinking more of the situation, and what's good for their living.
> Or, worse, accusing the authors of being xenophobic or racist only because they cast China in a poor light.
I mean, given what happened during the pandemic, and the Asian hate crime surge. It's not a stretch for some concerned readers (just like you) to have such emotions.
I myself were seriously concerned. And I bought 2 hand guns, 2 rifles, during the pandemic. Because I am a Chinese living in US, and I am concerned of my own and my wife and 2 young kids' safety. (And it turns out shooting as a sport is kind of fun, but that's a different story).
> There seems to be an odd desire right now to ignore any injustices going on in other countries, in favor of critiquing Western nations.
Really? Where are your evidence?
> Or even downplaying and excusing foreign corruption, to try to highlight how bad Western corruption is.
Name some examples. You are stating sweeping concept without evidences.
The global media is predominantly Western. I see no such sentiment reflected widely.
Could you please link some of the "rock-solid evidence" of corruption that she exposed?
They also display just how aggressively Chinese authorities reacted to non-state journalists simply filming things. So much anger and intimidation.
Her channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsNKkvZGMURFmYkfhYa2HOQ/vid...
Vaguely gesturing to a dense YouTube channel is not helpful.
If no, why would they treat her that way then?
Why she is willing to just not eat is a mystery. If she admitted to wrong doing they might let her out with a fine.
I seem no corruption. I do see the Chinese workers who did exteadornry work to support Wuhan. One great example is a hospital built in 10 days https://youtu.be/53nhErXUd9A
All people on the construction site are volunteer. They have had the chance to go back. But decided to risk their own lifes.
Besides there are numerous medical workers from all over China to come to Wuhan to alleviate the chaos.
My highest respect to those ordinary people.
So the message is, think twice, expose a government in bad light, people will feel bad for you, people will say they "wish they can help you" while you'll lament and rot in a prison.
USA does do it too, the more prolific cases are treason, but if you get suspected of anything, wide reaching warrants exist and your privacy becomes null. The more they can't find on you, the more the USA government believes there's a reason to look.
IS China better than USA? No, not at all - but same chilling effects.
Bunch of Winnie the Pooh shills/bots in this thread.
Well, it depends.
https://tousu.www.gov.cn/zwfw/index.htm
This is a Chinese central government website for collecting feedbacks comments and criticism on minor civil issues. At the bottom of the page, there are responses from the government officials on previous comments.
Everything is in Chinese.
I suppose when you say this, you probably have China and other “totalitarian” nations as the subject. So this example is from there.
I am less familiar with US system, but I think minor civil issued are managed by autonomous local community anyway. And there is no federal level civil management after all, not like China. Ie. Chinese central government can have a civil feedback channel, which does not make sense for US feral government, as that's not their scope of responsibility.
Government is setup to manage it's subject. It welcomes feedback, in general. Just like a company, the CEO welcome feedbacks. The government, likewise the CEO, are mostly worried when the subject refuse to care. Leaving everything in stagnation and limbo.
The crux of this type of incident is that, one who are aligned herself with western style of morality, would find Chinese laws often to be incompatible with those values. Often such conflict were named "authoratarian" "dictative" etc.
As a matter of fact, just like a lot of laws were passed in US without much democratic debate, most laws in China have no democratic debate in the process. There is public opinion collection phase, which does not have a open process. And that were seldom publicized for obvious distrust of the common people's judgement.
Then this lady probably did herself the ultimate sacrifice in practicing hungry strike, for proclaiming her own righteousness.
Unfortunately, this type of self sacrifice was not useful in changing the people's perception and mentality.
I always suggest people like her, western alike, to take a constructive approach to alter the CCP's behavior. I.e., one can always start by educating the normal citizens about the western values, one person after another.
Explicit and revolutionary conflicts are exciting, and probably can bring changes really quick. Like CCP did before, transformed the largest nation on earth from an old emperism led system to a socializism totalitarian system, in less than a few decades. But that causes a lot of human suffering, probably the worst in human history.
So, as I said, I want Ms. Zhang to keep herself healthy and strong. If she was imprisoned wrongly. Let the system know that you want to fight in a way that yielding is not an option, by actually living well.
this is where you, if you started practising this, would be moved to a re-education camp. And then you'd change your tune after coming back out.
This woman put her life on the line to do the whole world a service in a time of crisis. Her situation now reflects nothing more than the umbrage her government has taken with information getting out to the rest of the world about what was really happening in Wuhan. Full stop.
My motto has always been that I should be polite to any reasonable counterparts. I have dealt with CCP members before, a lot of them high officials. Those are reasonable people. I see no reason to not be polite.
But I did not suggest Zhang Zhan to be polite particularly. I suggest her keep her safe and healthy, such that she can educate the mass.
You can call this absurd, but your assessment would be more convincing if you can give the evidences.
One call Gahdi absurd, and see what he achieved...
> She brought this on herself for not accepting the terms of a made-up agreement
No, CCP put her in prison according to some law. She did hungry strike out of her own western influenced values.
To call this brought her onto her self, it's a misread. I never intended to depict that kind of image. I guess it was my English doing a disservice.
> she was not actually offered that's not actually mentioned in the article
I mean, this is pretty much the norm in china. Political issues are always solved with some back channel.
Zhang Zhan would refuse to accept such term. And she obviously decide to show her anger by hungry strike.
That's separate from the fact that the government can jail her on the ground of some dubious evidences and some previously enacted laws.
All in all, that's not to say one can blame herself for such suffering. That's not what I said, and not what I believe.
Well, it probably was my English doing me a disservice here again.
> This woman put her life on the line to do the whole world a service in a time of crisis
Not sure if you have watched her video.
Her video is about people and business suffering during the lockdown. Just like a lot of businesses are closed here in US, some random guy is going to post video about it. And showing great emotions about that. Viewers are moved and calling the lockdown inhuman violating human rights etc. Look, one even refuse the vaccine...
Is that a service to the world. Sure.
Is it extraordinary? I don't see that. I mean, it's a pandemic. Lockdown or not, no one knows how bad it would have been. And human history has no previous example of a large country like China can successfully extinguish a more than usual coronacirus before wide spreading.
She of course should not be jailed for posting videos. But to say she is some kind of Nobel character who did great benefit, is just plainly baseless.
> Her situation now reflects nothing more than the umbrage her government has taken with information getting out to the rest of the world about what was really happening in Wuhan
You can find a lot of vlog type video on what's happened during lockdown. Nothing too terrible. Just like what we experienced last March or so...
You are writing a lot of haunting words without much evidences. Don't fall for the MSM propaganda... BBC's deliberate video editing has been ridiculed on YouTube constantly. One example: BBC PSed trees to grey in order to show a gloomy scene out of nowhere... https://youtu.be/eS8EceIa1MQ
I dare to say, that's from main stream media reporting?
I have wechat group where people living in mainland and abroad discussing political economic topics. We exchange information, about the most sensitive topics. Peng Shuai, covid, US politics, Xi's lifetime term, etc. We are very open, of course we do use jargons to feel safer. No one is remotely close to be harassed by rededication camp recruiters...
My friends are all very open about Western ideas. They just don't care about voting and other western values. As I said, such value system are built from very young, it takes time.
They of course admire US environment where people can speak a lot of things without risks. And I absolutely sense that they prefer the society moving into that direction.
Given 1-2 generations, I see no reason why not CCP's core members will move into a mentality that open public discussion of most sensitive issues are OK, because at the time, the core members when they grow up, already accepted such values.
Let me tell you a story. Before 1970s, people in China value the communism high vision, they absolutely have much less interests in the material enjoyment; now they can always openly pursue such pleasure without any danger. That's the change that have always been happening, and will continue to happen.
I am startled by the fact that people do believe there is large scale forced rededication camp anywhere in China.
Look at US spy satellite's capabilities https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/03/commercia...
Of there is such camp, where is the satellite image? Did you see any issued by US information service?
All existing images are from random NGO or news outlets who have all the incentive to ounce on evidence without much verification.
Use your brain to analyze the situation. And see the propaganda and the manufactured consensus...
who said anything about large scale? There's no need, as the majority are sheep and follows obediently (as their lives are comfortable enough to not want it endangered "fighting the good fight").
The few that would lead are pruned early. Even very rich individuals, who, if they were in the west, would wield high amount of power and influence, are easily disappeared - ala, jack ma.
Jack Ma disappeared from public media. It's same here, if you make non political correct comments in public, you will be shuned like plague. One such example is Mr. Trump.
Don't paint a picture that China is unique worse than another country. It's all the essence in different disguise.
And stop associating certain behavior and incident with China as a whole.
Don't China this China that. Don't say China backed this and that, there are organization behind those. Find them, understand them, and see their motivation firstly from a personal perspective and then from the national ones.
Associating an entire nation to each and every bad things is unfair, irlogical, and dangerous.
So the CCP was not only active in continuing international flights while domestic flights were halted, but the CCP was actively suppressing patient counts and the sequence itself.
> Afterward, Zhang returned to Shanghai and prepared to travel to Beijing for more meetings. On the morning of Jan. 11, he was on the runway at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport when he received a phone call from a colleague, Professor Edward Holmes at the University of Sydney. A few minutes later, Zhang was strapped in for takeoff and still on the phone—then Holmes asked permission to release the genome publicly. “I asked Eddie to give me one minute to think,’” Zhang recalls. “Then I said ok.” For the next two hours, Zhang was cocooned from the world at 35,000 feet, but Holmes’ post on the website Virological.org sent shockwaves through the global scientific community.
1: https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coro...
> Yet Zhang denies reports in Western media that his laboratory suffered any prolonged closure, and instead says it was working furiously during the early days of the outbreak. “From late January to April, we screened more than 30,000 viral samples,” says Fan Wu, a researcher who assisted Zhang with the first SARS-CoV-2 sequencing.
Furthermore,
> And, in fact, Zhang insists he first uploaded the genome to the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) on Jan. 5—an assertion corroborated by the submission date listed on the U.S government institution’s Genbank. “When we posted the genome on Jan. 5, the United States certainly knew about this virus,” he says.
So was Washington also in on this cover-up conspiracy...?
This article mentions the Chinese lab released images of the sequence which is what assisted the Australian lab in reproduction[1], maybe those images is what they are referring to?
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-29/wuhan-coronavirus-cre...
What are you insinuating as the alternative, by the way? She's doing it for kicks?
Unfortunately for her handlers, such narratives have been overplayed and attention is a scarce resource nowadays.
Needless to day, I hope she ends up safe and healthy through this ordeal and isn't driven to suicide for worthless ideological points.
Also, to be sure, I don't think that last bit was all that "needless to say."
Many people in America have gone to jail for being radicalized and behaving erratically, from islamic extremists to Jan 6 rioters. It is statistically guaranteed that any large society to have small numbers of vulnerable, impressionable people & sociopaths who would abuse them for narrow personal or ideological gain.
Why do you think it is controversial that she deserves to be safe and healthy?
Also, it's absurd to equate what she's done to any form of violent extremism or the Jan 6 rioters -- that's an apples and hand grenades comparison.
And of course she deserves to be safe and healthy -- I say release her now (hell, my vote would be never imprison her in the first place, but I'm incapable of rewinding time). I just don't think it was "needless to say" coming from you given the rest of what you've written here, elsewhere on this thread, and elsewhere on this website.
Just because the ideology in question is your particular ideology, does not make manipulative radicalization defensible.
I'd wager that most people imprisoned for getting radicalized do so before committing any violent acts.
Especially when we're taking about East Asian nations, where social harmony tends to be valued over personal freedom, relative to the West.