Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s search for the truth during the early days of the pandemic was seen as a threat by the authorities
Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s search for the truth during the early days of the pandemic was seen as a threat by the authorities
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic. She shared her reports on X (then known as Twitter), YouTube and WeChat. She was one of the few independent Chinese reporters on the ground as Wuhan and the rest of China went into lockdown.
In one video, recorded in February 2020, Zhang said: “I can’t find anything to say except that the city is paralysed because everything is under cover. That’s what this country is facing now … They imprison us in the name of pandemic prevention and restrict our freedom. We must not talk to strangers, it’s dangerous. So without the truth, everything is meaningless. If we cannot get to the truth, if we cannot break the monopoly of the truth, the world means nothing to us.”
In another video, she showed a hospital that was overflowing with patients on trolleys in the hallway.
Braver than most western journalists, who regurgitate the corporatocracies narrative and manufacture consent on their behalf.
Hopefully she's given a good job and granted asylum somewhere in the west ASAP, so she can go on with her life.
EDIT: Gotcha! What kind of smooth brain do you have to be to consider my above statements logically inconsistent, ironic, or hypocritical?
None of the wests failings prevent it from currently enabling a freer and objectively better quality of life for the vast majority. She does not face persecution in the west. In China she has, and will continue to; especially under the social credit system.
That shouldn't be made clear to you because it's false, China has piles of issues of every kind from homelessness to internment camps to wealthy elite.
Even worker and labor protection issues. That's the entire reason in fact that US companies like to go with Chinese labor. It costs far less because the workers don't get paid as much and don't have the labor protections that Western countries do.
It seems she was detained for spreading misinformation about the pandemic when the initial outbreak was at its peak. That may not be illegal in the US. However, plenty of countries have such laws that go into effect during emergency situations.
I think it’s worth discussing the merits of those laws and how effective they are. However, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to use this case as a way to imply that China is silencing journalists when they report on inconvenient truths.
The mistake you make is that you assume the law works the same in China as in countries that have rule of law. China doesn't have rule of law, they have 'rule by law'. The Communist Party isn't just above the law, the law is a tool for them to use how they see fit. If you are undermining the Communist Party then that is by definition misinformation.
Remember, this is the same country where one day the minister of health aplauded a journalist's effort to combat pollution with a documentary called under the dome, and the next day it was gone from the internet as if it never existed.
Whenever they have internal issues they stir up some hatred for the USA or Japan, only to be forgotten somewhat later.
You know who else was arrested for "spreading misinformation"? The doctor who tried to warn his friends about covid privately, before the government took any action.
Not everyone of course but there's way too many people over there who will justify anything the Chinese government does or just ignore criticism by saying, "what about what the US does?!!?!"
How they cannot understand that the US and China are both dystopian hellscapes is embarrassing.
And don't forget the tragic ending suffered by the Dr (can't remember his name) that first brought out the covid issue, and his phone messages were leaked to the public if I am not mistaken. He was left dead with no proper care by the authority.
We found no evidence his medical care was compromised. But these documents, along with Dr. B’s account and experts’ analysis, reveal important new details about his illness and treatment.
and...
The experts said that based on the records, the treatment Dr. Li received, in general, followed the norms of that time for managing the symptoms of coronavirus patients
bur...
By the morning of Feb. 6, doctors wrote in the progress notes that Dr. Li was at risk of multiple organ failure. Several physicians we spoke to said that Dr. Li’s condition was so serious that his medical team should have at this point, or before it, considered intubating him and placed him on a ventilator — a higher level of oxygen support.
The records indicate that Dr. Li had earlier been given oxygen through a nasal tube and then an additional oxygen mask. His medical team also tried to use a noninvasive ventilator on Jan. 19, but wrote that “the patient could not tolerate.”
It is unclear why Dr. Li was not intubated. Some doctors are more reluctant to intubate young patients; sometimes the patients themselves refuse it. To this day, there is no consensus on when invasive ventilators should be used on Covid-19 patients.
and...
According to Dr. B, who arrived at Dr. Li’s intensive care ward around 9 p.m., about two hours after Dr. Li entered cardiac arrest, the hospital’s leadership pushed the medical team to use ECMO because it wanted to show the public that no effort had been spared.
But several doctors in the room argued that by that point it was too late for it to have been of any use, an assessment that six physicians we talked to agreed with. Dr. B also said putting Dr. Li on ECMO, given its invasive nature, would have been an “insult to his body.”
Wikipedia isn't really a good source for anything ever. If you're going to cite wikipedia then just grab the wikipedia's source from the bottom of the page.
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic.
But in fact, what the judge didn’t like was that she collected those materials and put them on Twitter … and received interviews from so-called enemy media,” said the lawyer, referring to publications such as the US government-funded Radio Free Asia.
Maya Wang, the associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “It’s a relief to know that Zhang is being released, given her very poor health in prison, but she shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place.
Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, said: “We urge the Chinese authorities to ensure that Zhang Zhan is fully free from 13 May.
She and her family must not be subjected to surveillance or harassment, and the Chinese authorities must also ensure there are no restrictions on her access to medical treatment after her traumatic ordeal in jail.”
The original article contains 726 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
As a Chinese person, I want to say: She may be innocent, but she deserves it.
Let's think of China as a computer with numerous programs running on it. The programs represent people and activities (normal work and life). The governing bodies are the operating system, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the programmer sitting in front of the computer. Sometimes, when programs want to change something beyond their scope of action (like street protests or large-scale online denunciations—complaining in a personal capacity is considered within normal scope), the operating system often first acts to prevent these overreaching actions (many times this doesn’t involve persecution, but rather a phone call or a visit to tell you to stop. In common terms within the country, this is called “cooling down the heat”). The primary goal of the operating system is to maintain the stable operation of the computer. The more stable and efficient it runs, the more likely it is to be promoted. When the programmer notices that a program is running unstably, the operating system will be modified to ensure greater stability and efficiency. This means the political careers of incompetent or unfit officials will end. This is why you sometimes see the government silencing people, but eventually, the situation still moves towards a relatively good outcome. For instance, in the “Tangshan BBQ beating incident,” initially the local government tried to cool down the heat, but when higher-level authorities and the CCP intervened, the local government’s protectors were removed, and the perpetrators were sentenced to 24 years. The pandemic situation was similar: at first, the Wuhan local government tried to cool down the heat, but when the whole country focused on Wuhan, several responsible officials there were held accountable by the central government and their political careers ended.
However, if the change in the program’s scope of action is due to the influence of external virus programs, even if the program's actions seem right to you, the program must be terminated. Since the pandemic began in 2019, Zhang's rhetoric has closely resembled that used by many foreign institutions, such as: calling for freedom, democracy, and denouncing CCP rule. The Chinese people do not care about this; we are more concerned with making money and improving our quality of life. It’s similar with the “Tank Man” incident: when foreign forces intervene, an internal conflict among the Chinese people becomes an external conflict between us and them. The economic conflicts of the 1990s, under the influence of Western powers, became an attempt to cause internal chaos in China through a “color revolution,” akin to a virus trying to turn the computer into a “zombie.” What do you think the programmer would do?
Foreign intervention in China is a very sensitive topic, reminding people of the history from 1840 to 1949, a period of human-on-human predation. Those who collaborated with Western countries lived very well, but ordinary people suffered immensely; small-scale farming economies were crushed by industrial machines, and proxy wars among foreign agents caused widespread chaos. Have you ever thought about why the CCP was able to unify the entire country? Why do the Chinese people support the CCP? Understand these questions before discussing China. I am tired of hearing you talk about snippets about China from Western media. It’s time to read history books, starting from 1840 to the present, paying attention to the global situation outside China. Then you will understand why China has become what it is today.