The Chinese regime responded to the pandemic by covering up and silencing whistleblowers, then when it was too late to ignore, it enacted brutal, draconian measures on its own citizens—all while propaganda was spread internally through state-run media.
The U.S. response meanwhile was humane, spotlighting the contrast between a free society’s handling of a crisis versus that of a tyrannical regime. Experts told The Epoch Times that free speech and freedom itself is core to how effectively a government responds to crisis, emphasizing the values of transparency and compassion.
“I don’t want to shut my eyes and ears. ... I’m doing this so that more young people like me can stand up,” Li, 25, said in a passionate speech live-streamed on YouTube before police entered a hotel he was staying in and presumably detained him.
He at first refused to let them in. He turned his camera on and began alluding to the student-led Tiananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989, which came to a bloody end after Beijing deployed tanks and guns. “I feel that it’s unlikely that I will not be taken away and quarantined,” he said, shortly before he opened the door.
The police confiscated his phone and laptop and cut off the signal.
“The coronavirus crisis is no different,” he told The Epoch Times. “Evidence clearly shows the Communist Party silenced people concerned about the spread of the virus to protect its own interests, and as a result, it’s very likely thousands of people have died who otherwise would not have.”
As the number of CCP virus cases grew and officials couldn’t censor everything, officials in Wuhan began sealing the buildings and doors of residents.
Draconian Tactics
There are countless examples of the CCP’s draconian actions against its own citizens; The Epoch Times has reported on many of them. Beijing has deliberately masked the total number of COVID-19 cases in China in a bid to safeguard its image both nationally and internationally.“The Communist Party isn’t interested in protecting human rights, and it never has been. Its primary goal is always to maintain its own power, at any cost,” Haskins said. “You’ll see governing officials say and do whatever it takes—including lie—to keep people from doubting their role in society.”
Free Speech
Sarah Repucci, vice president of research and analysis at the U.S.-based human rights group Freedom House, said that in an emergency situation, free speech “enables the government to learn the reality of what is happening and respond more quickly.”“If people don’t feel safe speaking out, they’re less likely to spread information that is crucial for helping to contain the pandemic,” she told The Epoch Times. “The solution to misinformation is not to censor.”
Although many countries still struggle to handle the pandemic effectively, Repucci said that with time, “free societies are more likely to keep restrictions proportionate and limited in duration to the health threat.”
“Less free societies are more likely to use the emergency to justify repression that consolidates their power,” she said. “That is the risk for the long term.”
China ranks 177 out of 180 in the 2019 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. The regime is also expelling U.S. journalists based in China who work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, highlighting the country’s dismal track record on press freedom.
Etienne Deffarges, health care policy expert and member of the Executive Council of the Harvard School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times, “It would be much easier to believe the flattering China’s official statistics if they were validated by a thriving and independent media.” China has recently pushed the narrative that there are zero, or few new cases of the virus in the country.
Haskins said that without free speech, “virtually no other freedoms are possible,” noting that in China, there is no such right.
Free World
Michael Barone, a political analyst and emeritus fellow at American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said countries such as Taiwan and South Korea quickly enacted strict but not draconian measures to stop the spread of the CCP virus “with a transparency that’s a vivid contrast with the concealment and lies that are standard practice in the People’s Republic of China.”“I think there is a shocking contrast between the behavior and performance of Communist-ruled China and those of its neighbors with a similar ethnic and/or cultural heritage—Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore,” Barone told The Epoch Times.
Barone expanded on that argument in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, writing, “It’s clear that regime character makes an enormous difference.”
President Donald Trump acted relatively quickly to the CCP virus as well, on Jan. 31 barring entry to the United States from foreign nationals who had been in mainland China.
The United States’ measures to slow the spread of the CCP virus are much more humane than China’s. U.S. residents in some of the harder-hit areas of the country are being told to stay home if possible, and everyone is recommended to maintain safe social distances.
The United States also never employed draconian measures or thuggish tactics against its own citizens.
Deffarges said the countries who have been responding to the virus well have shown close cooperation and harmony of communication between federal and local governments, something he criticized the United States for not following.
But he noted that free societies “will eventually prove better than authoritarian regimes at handling this pandemic crisis, provided they enjoy both good governments and public trust.”
Over the next 12–18 months, solutions to beat the pandemic will likely come from the United States’ “unique combination of leading academic medical centers and national institutes of health and private enterprises, large and small,” Deffarges said.
“In the U.S., Franklin Delano Roosevelt enjoyed immense trust at the outset of World War II, and used this trust to mobilize the whole of U.S. industry in the war effort,” he said.