Li Wenliang reminds us: COVID truths, not censorship and deception
FORUM Staff
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is transitioning to a new era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since late 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been dismantling the nation’s strict “zero-COVID” policies after unprecedented citizen protests across China. Although the lifting of lockdowns has wrought a sea change in daily life, the nation is experiencing surging cases, with deaths climbing into the hundreds of thousands by some estimates.
The tragedy — and the CCP’s enhanced efforts to censor, repress and twist truths — is bringing one man to the minds of Chinese citizens: Li Wenliang. The Wuhan doctor was among the first to warn of the danger of the virus and one of its earliest victims. The 34-year-old whistleblower died in February 2020.
Li first encountered the virus in late 2019 in Wuhan, where COVID-19 was later confirmed as first reported. A text warning about the “SARS-like virus” that he sent to colleagues in a private chat went viral, and CCP officials soon ordered him to sign a confession saying his statements about the virus were false. Chinese authorities denied the virus was spread by contact despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
Li and other Wuhan Central Hospital doctors, however, saw signs of severe contagiousness. “When this news came out, a few doctors in my office were upset, saying, ‘How could there be no human transmission?’” one of Li’s colleagues told The New York Times newspaper. “Entire families came to our emergency room with the same disease.”
Despite official claims that no medical personnel had been infected, Li contracted the virus and died weeks later — but not before posting his story to Weibo from his hospital bed. He has become an icon in China for speaking the truth despite the CCP’s attempts to silence him. As the pandemic stretched on, internet users continued to engage with Li’s Weibo account, posting stories of isolation, loneliness, frustration and fear. (Pictured: People attend a vigil for Dr. Li Wenliang in Hong Kong on February 7, 2020.)
With cases rising, social media users are returning to his account. “Dr. Li, in the past three years, I often think of you at night. I burst into tears every time,” one person posted, according to NBC News.
Since restrictions were eased, the CCP has stopped widespread testing and released official case numbers so low that they invited new suspicion. The figures underrepresent “the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths,” Dr. Michael Ryan, World Health Organization emergencies program executive director, said in January 2023, according to the BBC.
That same month, Seoul announced plans to limit short-term visas to travelers from China after up to 80% of new confirmed cases in South Korea were traced to China. Instead of transparency and data sharing that could help other nations manage risk, the CCP again resorted to deflection, with Beijing accusing South Korea of discrimination, CNBC reported.
In January 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China warned it would be cracking down on “fake information” and “online rumors related to the epidemic,” purportedly to “prevent misleading the public and causing social panic,” The Guardian newspaper reported. The South China Morning Post newspaper reported that Weibo had banned over 1,000 accounts for “inciting conflict” and making accusations related to the pandemic.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
