China is Serving Up a Heapin' Helpin' of Pandemic Propaganda
You have probably seen the video images of desperate residents of Shanghai, China. The entire city has been placed under quarantine for weeks in an attempt to stem a COVID-19 wave there.
According to reports, people are not allowed to leave their residences for any reason—not to shop, walk pets, fill prescriptions, get medical treatment—and they are arrested if they do. There is no end in sight and people are running short on food and medicine.
I have been surprised that the Chinese government would allow images like these to circulate. Normally they maintain tight control over the narrative, so they must intend for these scenes to get out into the wild.
A guy writing an op-ed at Forbes says the Shanghai shutdown is strategic, but for non-pandemic reasons. The idea, he claims, is to squeeze Western economies by shutting down China's biggest manufacturing and shipping port.
Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR calls bullshit on this idea. "If the Chinese wanted to shut down the port, they would just shut it down," he points out.
A less extreme explanation is that this is strategic messaging about the pandemic itself. For the domestic audience, warn people in areas where there are not yet lockdowns to avoid getting infected: Here's what could happen to you if you're not careful. For the international audience, project strength and promote fear: If this is what we're willing to do to our own people, imagine what we might do to you.
Internationally, it wouldn't be the first time China has tried to manipulate pandemic news to support its red dragon rising narrative. President Xi intends to emerge triumphantly from the pandemic, showing that his policies have kept China from being decimated, while populations in the crumbling West have suffered because of their weak and fleckless leaders.
In this environment, no pronouncements about the pandemic from the Chinese government can be taken at face value. Rather, they should viewed as elements of an information operation.
People have long suspected that the Chinese are cooking the books on infection and death rates in order to make themselves look awesome. The Washington Post just renewed this criticism in an editorial from their board (sorry, paywall) entitled "The pandemic statistics from China are too good to be true."
And they are right. According to the latest figures from JHU (which reports counts from the government) China has had just 612,821 cases and 4,642 deaths over the entire pandemic. Those figures just don't pass the smell test in a country with 17% of the world's population at 1,412,600,000 people. I don't care how good they have been at managing the pandemic.
For comparison, Denmark has a population 242 times smaller than China (5,834,950). It has responsible laws, good health care, and cooperative citizens. It is not trying to fool anybody about its pandemic record. It has reported five times the number of cases and 1.3 times the number of deaths as China.
So next time you hear any pronouncements about how spectacularly China is managing the pandemic, just remember that it's probably some talking point cooked up by state propagandists. The goal is to make China look good and the U.S. look bad, facts be damned.
Also, next time you hear COVIDiots in the U.S. bellyaching about government tyranny (for example here) because of things like mask requirements, recognize how silly they sound. China shows us what real tyrants do in situations like this. It's like the classic "that's not a knife" scene from Crocodile Dundee.
