By Lee Je-Hoon

There was once the notion that in order to accurately read China’s inner workings, you should read the South China Morning Post (SCMP), an influential Hong Kong newspaper founded in 1903. As most of the media in China have been state-run, it was a compliment that you would only appreciate if you had read the newspaper, which reported with accuracy based on various sources inside China.

However, since the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba took over SCMP in December 2015, subtle changes have taken place within the SCMP editorial office. The number of reporters who came from mainland China with pro-China tendencies has increased, which some longtime readers attributed to the deteriorated quality of the reporting. 

The turning point further triggering the departure of competent reporters at the SCMP—be it due to incongruity or for personal reasons—was the anti-government protests in 2019, which led to the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law. In May 2020, the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) passed this law on behalf of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and in a nutshell, put an end to political freedom in Hong Kong.

It was the first time that mainland China directly legislated a law in Hong Kong since the city was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The NPC stepped in and essentially resolved Hong Kong’s futile attempt (in 2003) to introduce a national security law, crushed by strong opposition from Hong Kong citizens and civic groups.

While China took control of Hong Kong through the the National People’s Congress, the silent repression also took place within the SCMP. The company’s higher-ups directed use of words like “riots” over “protests” to describe the anti-government demonstrations against a proposed extradition bill by the Hong Kong government. At SCMP, some reporters did not agree with such maneuvers. Two Sides of A Lie was a novel written and published in 2021 by a couple of the reporters who were inspired by real events that took place in the newsroom and in Hong Kong. 

The Washington Post, an influential American newspaper founded in 1877, adopted “Democracy Dies in Darkness” as its slogan in February 2017. It was the first adopted slogan ever for the 140-year-old paper. Some say that the Washington Post’s call out on the crisis of democracy was aimed at then-President Donald Trump’s regressive policies.

In explaining his purchase of the Post in a 2016 interview, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, had used the phrase. “I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light.”

The reason political freedom is disappearing in Hong Kong or that the crisis of democracy is being discussed in the United States boils down to one thing: politics no longer reflect the will of the people. In mainland China, people who no longer could tolerate the draconian zero-Covid policy took to the streets in November, holding “blank paper” protests and even calling for Xi Jinping’s resignation. The demonstrations can also be viewed as a failure of Chinese politics.

Although the Chinese authorities have succeeded in calming the people’s dissatisfaction by scrapping the zero-Covid strategy, they cannot prevent the outburst of anger with surveillance and control for good. Perhaps the blank paper protests represent a new voice calling out for freedom of expression in the Chinese society, which has predominantly put its emphasis on economic growth. While contradictions in the Chinese society will be difficult to resolve in the short term, conflicts and dissatisfaction will, inevitably, still increase, as would public resistance. However, if politics continues to fail, it will only raise the threshold of resistance and create antipathy.

* The blank paper represents everything protesters wish they could say but cannot.

 
Editor’s note: Lee Je-Hoon is an editor in the South Korean daily newspaper The Seoul Shinmun. This commentary was first published in Korean in the Seoul Shinmun.

Covid is tearing through China, and the Chinese government decided it is time to open its doors to allow citizens to travel abroad.

Chinese citizens are flooding foreign cities in droves following China’s sudden abolition of its draconian zero-Covid policy. Half the passengers on two flights from China to Milan on Christmas week were found to be infected with the virus.

Just as the rest of the world is beginning to move beyond the shadow of Covid-19 that originated from Wuhan in 2020, Beijing’s about-turn is once more upending the new normal. Millions are contracting infections in China each day, and a proportion of them are travelling abroad, while their government is increasingly evasive in the retreat from the “dynamic zero-Covid” strategy. Forget about sharing data as that would directly weigh on the credibility of President Xi Jinping’s “all-out people’s war” on the coronavirus.

Given the circumstances, it is inevitable for countries to protect their own people and avoid another global spread of infections. A growing list of them are requiring negative test results or reinstating testings on China arrivals. Beijing via its state media has predictably, railed against these foreign governments, calling the measures “discriminatory”.

As recent as November, the Chinese leadership was reiterating resoluteness to uphold Xi’s hallmark policy, the basis in which it had used to claim superiority of its authoritarian model over Western democracy as evidenced by the pandemic chaos in the West particularly in the early days of containment in 2020. By the end of the month, however, China was roiled by mass public protests against the controls, triggered by a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region where the victims were trapped in the building because of lockdown measures. Many defied repercussions for political activity in the modern autocracy, backed by surveillance technologies that give protesters no place to hide, to join the most widespread demonstrations since the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In their wake, Beijing shifted course almost overnight, following the approach of “living with the virus” like the Western economies that it previously scorned at for their incompetence in containing Covid.

For now, there is no time for the ideological argument, not when the Chinese economy’s well-being hangs in the balance. Being able to ensure that the quality of life continues to improve for citizens is the unwritten pact and yardstick by which the public measures the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy to rule, more so as they tolerate rising authoritarianism. 

China’s economy is sputtering. The pandemic battered domestic consumption, the pillar to which Beijing shifted towards to reduce the economy’s reliance on exports for growth as well as exposure to external factors it can’t control. In the five years to 2019, prior to the pandemic, the share of exports in its GDP shrank from 23.5 percent to 18.4 percent. The trend has reversed since then as home-bound consumers around the world snapped up Chinese goods when Covid hit. Then, Beijing’s strict lockdowns in 2022 disrupting supply chains took a toll on export growth.

Exports dropped 8.7 percent in November from a year earlier for a second straight month, the steepest fall since February 2020 when the viral outbreak occurred. Weakening global demand due to high inflation and aggressive interest rate hikes by major economies like the US, Japan and South Korea didn’t help.

The World Bank has slashed its 2022 growth forecast for the Chinese economy to 2.7 percent from 4.3 percent. In his New Year address though, Xi said the country’s GDP exceeded  US$17.4 trillion in 2022. That would have been a 4.4 percent rise from 2021.

Officially, China has registered just more than 5,200 deaths from Covid, a tiny fraction of US’s 1.1 million, the world’s highest death toll. There is a yawning gap between the picture Beijing painted and the reality reflected in social media posts from Chinese citizens across the country. Hospital emergency wards are overflowing with patients and medical supplies are running low or out. Even shelves of pharmacies in Hong Kong are cleaned out either by relatives snapping up basic drugs to send to families in mainland China or Chinese visitors to the city.

China’s border reopening on January 8 puts Hong Kong in the first line of fire. While the Hong Kong government is eager to reopen its border with the mainland, Hongkongers are apprehensive, fearing another wave of infections among other concerns. It doesn’t need a sixth wave after the last one in 2022 claimed over 11,000 lives. 

During the Lunar New Year in 2020, the Chinese government allowed millions to travel abroad when it knew there was a new coronavirus infecting its people. It suppressed information and covered up until the virus was rapidly spread to the rest of the world.

Several mutations of the coronavirus have been identified since December 2020. China’s current outbreak is causing concern of producing a new variant, which will raise questions such as: will the vaccines still work and are people more at risk for getting sick.

There is a sense of déjà vu, but this time, the rest of the world will not be taken by surprise.