as the coronavirus crack the great wall of china people demand government action after the virus kills the daughter who sounded the alarm can china as the does contain the online anger about the cover up this isn't science story. hello welcome to the show i'm sammy's a than china senses the internet more than just about anywhere in the world and i think critical of the government is usually immediately removed but the sense is a struggling to contain the outrage of the corona virus outbreak and there's widespread anger that the disease has killed one of the 1st doctors to sound the alarm over the new virus leigh when liang warned colleagues in december before he was arrested by police and forced to confess to spreading rumors uses of china's social media network way both described his death as a national humiliation even state media as backing public calls for government leaders to say sorry for silencing him. well there she did in the future i deeply regret his death and feel sincerely sad for her we need to say if the employer once of his death can wake up anything and i hope he did not die and fang. the government should hear different opinions and allow them to exist they should encourage criticism of anyone who has done wrong only then can you know all the problems you know work we shouldn't only praise what we've done well we really need to find out what worked and badly what needs to be improved. he said a responsible attitude toward society he is honest and faithful so i think the whole society should reflect on this. i'm angry because is now only him it may also be a situation that everyone will encounter in the future. i think there will be more and more whistleblowers in the future he may be one of the few representatives at present but now this is the kind of awareness is getting stronger and stronger in the future we will be more and more people like this on public events. of following the announcement of the doctor's death the head of china's foreign ministry in hong kong gave a rare news conference in english he welcomed what he called lively discussions on why. the champs enjoy freedom of speech. and access to information and. if you. go to our online chat it's especially during the past few weeks. then you will see. how. the public. gauging. and how actively engaging in lively discussions of the evidence. let's bring our gas into the show we have joining us from hong kong joseph chang a political activist with the pro-democracy group alliance for true democracy in beijing i know tangan is an advisor to joiners government on economic and development issues as well as being a china analyst and from bangkok in thailand elliott zeidman co-host the china tech investor podcast thank you all for joining us let me start with i know in beijing so is a clearer picture emerging of authorities simply mishandling the information that dr lee brought to light. well let's just be careful here this is an immense tragedy to young man who devoted his life to medicine but he was an ophthalmologist he was not he was an eye doctor he's not an infectious disease specialist and he was sharing some concerns he had in a private chat group that went viral and there was a series of events he did this at the end of 2019 january 1st they went in closed the market now but it's only on they shouldn't have been went to all up by police general 7 rumah mongering right that wasn't the right way to deal if in if he was only an up to he was he was questioned by the police he. you can you can put any spin you want on it but he was questioned by the police he was in fact. suspended and that's because he was in essence spreading rumors he's as i said not an infectious disease specialist but in any event by the 7th of january there were people who understood the virus there was a leading research chinese who had been involved in sars and they understood completely that this was something new and that it was dangerous and they needed to contain it and the bad part was when the local government decided that all they needed to do was clean out the market often political leaders do not have such a subject matter knowledge and this was the case here they acted based on their political desire which was to have a upcoming meeting with no bad news and as a result this something that could have been contained earlier was not right let's take that perspective that joseph in hong kong political leaders didn't have subject knowledge did local authorities then fail here a whole new realizing the seriousness of the situation. well the chinese communist regime may be strong immobilization might get kinda military medical personnel to create building. of hospitals a new hospital in. record time the kind of thing but transparency is definitely not restrung point let me cite 2 simple facts the chinese foreign ministry sports person told the international community that the chinese government informed the white house about the big rally as early as generally does sir but the time is a forest these only inform the chinese update about the epidemic crisis mordred 2 weeks data about generally the 19 are generally the trend here and there and when the mayor of new hon was questioned by gen is why he delayed their view of asian of the epidemic crisis he sept at informing the public rate equired the approval of the chinese authorities of his superiors there spoke a lot and certainly the part the citizen king has told the nation that are guiding the directions of up it is also a very important element in the campaign against the against epidemic certain aid the chinese authorities do not want to allow the pup wait to see their undesirable parts and these are all aspects of the epidemic and it kind of that of the epidemic of the epidemic spring elliot's into the discussion eliot you monitor what goes on in the online world looking at what is going on in platforms like way bo and we chat is there a feeling out there that this disease could have been perhaps better contained had a. he's acted albeit a little more transparent with the public. yeah i think that definitely seems to be the consensus i don't know if everyone has that point of view but i think that i've never seen the chinese public internet space like this particularly when i looked at my watch had stayed last night every single post was about this doctor i've never seen anything like that in my decade or so of using the the platform it's really a very strong response and and i think with a lot of folks they they're really upset they're cramped up inside they're not able to go outside are not able to live their lives what is being whether doing it the rest of their down to the level of interest if not anger then it's well i think some of them are just inside for to they're looking at their phones but i think also a lot of them do feel betrayed that is that is absolutely fine who is local authorities so the central government or i think different people will it's will say different things i think certainly the local authorities but you can't blame the local authorities without also looking at the broader system and i think that what we've been seeing over the past most the past decade is increased clamping down in china's digital space and chinese information space and it's been particularly repressive over the past year or 2 and i think this has been a time for a lot of folks to where it's just kind of reached this boiling point and a lot of folks are venting their frustration because the public square has shrunk so much in china that it's like a boiling kettle that is just being that has no no relief and i think a lot of a lot of folks are taking this opportunity to really bet that right now i mean the from where you sit in beijing how significant is this online anger is it a. a very rare expression that beijing should take very seriously i think they do should take it very seriously i mean china's been very good about the ground logistics taking care of things but they're not very good at p.r. and contrary to my hong kong colleagues thought about this i do think you need to during the vents like this control the narrative in terms of making sure that you don't have fear all of these panic driving people you know if you look at the internet there's so many of a different conspiracy theories false information being spread around and this kind of thing is is you do as a government have a responsibility to address that in terms of the internet i think there's a misconception here i don't i talk to people every day i've lived here for 15 years i get annoyed at having to use a v.p.n. but the vast majority of people it doesn't even phase them this is not an issue about the internet this is an issue about expectations of government and a muddled message and i would agree with my other colleagues that sitting inside poring over your phone looking for a new news it can get very very tedious people have a lot of anger and fear and it's natural for them to find some sort of lightning rod but china the companies government need i decided i wanted her that i didn't know what was going on go ahead eliot. so i think that to some extent i agree there but you have to look at the bigger picture here so per se ok what what are china's internet regulators to do in each given moment then yeah like you can understand some of these clamp down this is a failure over decades of failure to build up these institutions that can that can deal with problems like this so every time that we have seen we have seen amazing independent media rise within china over the past few decades and every time that it's come up it's been squashed so what what remains is the state or rumor so yeah if you're if you're a regulator or you're one of these platforms you're going to squash these rumors because people don't know the difference between rumors and real news because they don't trust the state and then everything else is rumored. for example like i seen which is one of china's most respected independent media outlets has been doing great reporting on the virus because they're one of the only ones allowed to exist in china. what china is is there a bulk up like super strong security state with guinea legs being their civil society and this is the core issue they need to have strong independent intuition that's the issue here i don't joseph i'll give you a 2nd to come in let me give i know a brief 2nd to come back i think your rant speaks for itself you have made up yeah i think you've made up your mind on how this how this is and and i can understand from western perspective from a democracy you know the press it's a recent lapse and vital role is before us later in their funny how we're on of that if you would let me finish please thank you and any event so what you have to understand is that there are in fact different systems that it's not a cookie cutter universe where exactly one shape fits all china has been successful the government has according to the. w.h.o. performed admirably there set the gold standard for dealing with this i don't know that you're trying to interject this idea that the press would somehow have cured this or prevented this outbreak that were valid no this is about it i have your list let's give joseph a chance to weigh in on this go ahead as if one can see it's time these authorities try to interview of the device called the greedy band to monitor at the new computer a few years ago that did well out but then in the past one or 2 years the chinese authorities are regularly interviews in what they call a so-so practice system which is actually a monitoring system informing the authorities how politically correct every individual is and it is made clear very clear that criticism saw and do criticisms of the chinese authorities over to the internet you cause you a reduction of your points of the ratings in this also this system and gives your point some rating is some very low you can't even afford to buy a high speed rail way to 10 or up and ticket so just monitoring system is fair and we all know that the perfect way of killing rumors of destroying rumors is to inform the public problem see you in detail and actually feed to get trust of the people into it of parties sudden seemed appropriate we will not help to create trust that me i will not present to the upper lake in a crisis defunding the this crisis perhaps is going to push authorities towards more transparency and openness already we're hearing that beijing is introduce for example a whistle blower hotline in the we chat service. but at the same time you know his central propaganda the ottoman of the party had sas and sent 300 journalists to war to inform the public and i think most chinese people if effected internet into an internet are quite cynical about this and they say that it is propaganda is not informing the public an essene are all the medical facilities he. is far in adequate it can not deal with the number of recognised cases even according to the statistics of the government the new york hospital just built has 1000 hospital beds but the recognised cases of the virus are colorado but rather those numbers at least chillies 526000 in the city so the facilities are far from adequate ok let me says if something is so i may bring elliot back into the chair and let's also this question i mean what does this whole issue reveal about toward extent private chat groups are really private home some of the the apps like we chat and way bo if ultimately the reason that dr lee went to the police so we put it that way was because of a message you put out and one of these private groups. i don't get i don't know anyone in china who assumes that their group chads are private yet it's different than way ball which is a twitter was like twitter where there is a bi reality that can happen but with we chat if you have something within a group. you know it might go from group to group of people sharing app but it's not it doesn't have the same kind of viral effect that that twitter dies but yeah i think that there is there's definitely concern about how what you share in a wheelchair. group and what happens is that if the person who is the administrator of the group is the one who is held accountable so so if you are administering ministering a group your the onus is on you to and the incentive is there to be very careful about what people are posting within that group and what that does is it creates a silencing effect where if anything is possibly risky they shut it down and that and the ripple effects of this is i think. this kind of thing it's not the only effect but i think this is one ripple effect of that i mean to do you think this whole issue is going to full so the chinese authorities to look at this in a different way of how they manage information even if as you said there is a concern to make sure that rumors don't go rampant do you think the lesson is going to be taken back that this is not the way that information from docs is can be handled in the future. well quite frankly if you look at the w.h.o. guidelines on communications that were developed post bola i understand that they say that everything should be synchronized in order to make sure that the government is in fact or whoever's leading this has a credibility that's necessary to guide the public now today we live in a world of social media i mean there's concerns about we chat and facebook and how they are being used to manipulate the public in elections and things like that there's all sorts of very weird rumors that are constantly circulating then you have in some an event like this where it all gets focused i think governments almost all governments are going to have to take these very seriously and make sure that they do it i do agree with my colleague when he says that the best way to make sure that you have a credible story is to be out in front of it i think during 911 giuliani who has since then not made of himself the best at that point he he did a tremendously good job of making sure people understood that they cared that the information was transparent i think china is trying to do that but they're not good at this p.r. game in terms of the future i don't know i mean the china is moving towards a sovereign internet as is most of the world the abuses he calls them my colleague calls them in china are actually mirrored l. most everywhere in the world united states we saw from the snowden leaks and things like this that you know there's a lot of information that's being gathered surreptitiously may be against the law so at this point privacy is not what we want it to be it is probably a horse that has left the barn so closing the doors not going to do anything but china have a very high this is the right word that i think russia should be in a more complex about saying what is the go ahead eliot. i don't know if i want to equate those 2 right we're not talking about privacy here we're talking about speech and i also want to emphasize here i don't necessarily want to be chris critical of the government response here where i do have criticism and i think where a lot of. my chinese friends as well have have criticism is the system that allows this to happen that puts security above all else or stability above all else and this kind of paranoid attitude that regulators have that local officials have and that that these platforms have as well that just really stifles information and doesn't allow a healthy information ecosystem to grow this is not something that and that can happen in the short term it's something that needs to be built up over the long term this is to be a term goal of no it isn't go ahead joseph. this is not an issue or they believe that the new should it is a. hang on a minute hour of your child's. second pretty eyes let's hear it clear if we may both just give joseph a chance to finish all i'll come back to you guys firstly i'm an aids and the power of the regime are part of the basic rights that the people and that is what makes to people angry because now people you will harm the many people in cities like 10000 and so on joseph to them as i am this point allowed to judge me here my real terms of this forum at that time there is a very big country on the transition to democracy needs to be managed but it can't be solved nor is the chaotic as the often is often the line that we hear from beijing is there any you know some some is there a point to that thinking that the transition to perhaps a fully democratic and open system must be managed in a way that doesn't cause chaos through mass fear what would you say to that joseph well people now see that the endless fear has been tightening not more relaxing and i think all observers of china have been pointing to the fact that since roughly yet to all 8 that you have the olympics the year of the riots in combat and following the riots in sindh jan into all 9 sayings have been totally again we've got a right internet bit yes our very openly on the internet has been prosecuted and they have been silence and here unless discussions of that the internet all right we've got one minute left i want to give the final chance to i need to come back in on some of those comments go ahead i have a briefly. i think there are different points of view on this but the important thing is that china needs to develop a system work in informants people and internationally i think they've done well in some aspects in that but not the p.r. i hope that everybody can see each other's points and that we can look at the main issue here which is the virus we're going to have to wrap it up there let's thank joseph and elliot and thank you for watching you can see the show again any time by visiting our website 0 don't call me for further discussion you can head over to off ice book page find the address that 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