Beijing is not tolerating any criticism of its response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The Chinese Embassy in Nepal recently issued a statement lashing out at a local Nepalese newspaper for reprinting an opinion article criticizing China’s response during the novel coronavirus outbreak, making a veiled threat against the paper and its editor-in-chief.
“We may never know if the spread of the new virus could have been prevented by earlier, concerted action. But the fact that China chose secrecy and inaction turned the possibility of an epidemic into a reality,” Daalder wrote.
Li, an ophthalmologist, was one of eight whistleblowers who first publicized information about an “unknown pneumonia” outbreak on Chinese social media on Dec. 30 last year. Four days later, he was summoned to a local police station where he was reprimanded for “rumor-mongering.”
Li died of the coronavirus in Wuhan in the morning on Feb. 7 and he contracted the virus when treating a patient.
Daalder added that Chinese authorities had delayed acknowledging the severity of the outbreak in China for weeks, and had not allowed a World Health Organization (WHO) investigating team to enter China until recently.
“Authoritarian political systems don’t do well when confronting unexpected crises, especially those like infectious diseases that require a rapid local response,” Daalder said in a reference to China’s political system.
Responses
Shortly after the op-ed was published, China’s embassy in Nepal issued a statement saying The Kathmandu Post had “deliberately smeared the efforts of the Chinese government and people fighting against the new coronavirus pneumonia and even viciously attacked the political system of China.”The embassy called out the Post’s editor-in-chief, Anup Kaphle, saying he had always been “biased on China-related issues” and had become “a parrot of some anti-China forces.”
In a veiled threat, the embassy stated that it “reserves the right of further action” against the newspaper and Kaphle.
Chinese ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi, who retweeted the embassy’s statement, also received criticism for the rebuke, including from Vijay Kant Lal Karna, Nepal’s former ambassador to Denmark.
“Ambassador you crossed the diplomatic limitations. This is not acceptable by this country. Vienna convention does not allow you to threat media and Chief Editor [sic],” the former ambassador said.
Dinesh Bhattarai, Nepal’s former permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, told The Kathmandu Post that “reprinting an article does not qualify as parroting any view.”
In an editorial published on Feb. 19, The Kathmandu Post said the embassy’s statement was about more than the newspaper or its editor-in-chief.
“It is a rebuke to not bite the hand that feeds,” the editorial stated, in reference to Chinese foreign aid to the South Asian country. The aid “comes with strings attached,” it said, adding that the embassy was “testing the waters to see if Nepalis and Nepali society will tolerate this kind of intrusion into values that Nepal holds sacrosanct.”
Beijing’s low-tolerance for criticism about the novel coronavirus was also evident in another recent incident.
The WSJ article had questioned whether Chinese authorities were “still trying to conceal the true scale” of the coronavirus outbreak.
