26 b
photo: Pathumporn Thongking Health workers provide testing for COVID-19 at a hospital in Thailand. Thailand’s government gave strong support to China’s battle against coronavirus.
Strategic Vision vol. 9, no. 47 (September, 2020)
The People’s Spin
Beijing report plays up COVID-19 successes to burnish tarnished image Shao-cheng Sun
T
he coronavirus pandemic has been a disastrous worldwide event. The virus was first detected in November 2019 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, local officials in the city of Wuhan did not disclose the information when the outbreak first hit the city. It was this initial silence that allowed the contagious virus to expand as widely throughout China, and around the world, as it has. The US Department of Homeland Security has determined that the PRC government “intentionally concealed the severity” of COVID-19 from the inter-
national community during these early days, using this time to buy more than two billion masks and 25 million pieces of protective clothing from overseas suppliers before the true extent of the COVID-19 outbreak made itself known. When the number of victims began to increase by the end of January 2020, China’s leadership launched a national campaign marked by aggressive measures, such as locking down entire cities, closing schools, constructing temporary hospitals, and deploying medical staff to Wuhan. These measures seemed to be working. Reports of new cases began to drop sig-
Dr. Shao-cheng Sun is an assistant professor at The Citadel specializing in China’s security, East Asian affairs, and cross-strait relations. He can be reached for comment at ssun@citadel.edu