Transparency

Experts say China is much mistaken if it thinks that serving up nitty-gritty details on the initial stage of the Covid-19 outbreak will help it deal with the groundswell of negative international opinion against the country.

The case of a former high-calibre law consultant who allegedly sexually abused a teenage girl has been making the rounds among China’s internet community. While the man argued that theirs was a consensual relationship, netizens are not buying it. Zaobao correspondent Yang Danxu asks: "What does it mean when justice has to be upheld by public opinion?"

Lianhe Zaobao’s Beijing correspondent Yang Danxu recounts her recent visit seeking medical treatment in Beijing in times of Covid-19. She extrapolates from her experience of being initially turned away and sounds a reminder to officials not to let complacency or a wish to maintain a positive recovery record lead to China facing a recurrent rash of outbreaks.

Netizens are devastated that an investigation report into the Li Wenliang incident released yesterday only yielded a chastising of local police officials. They assert that the report was grossly inadequate in addressing their suspicions of a cover-up in the initial stages of the Covid-19 outbreak. They ask: Was this meagre result all Dr Li Wenliang’s death was worth?

Texts written in reverse, replaced with emojis, and encrypted in morse code... Netizens demonstrated their creativity in resurrecting an interview with Ai Fen, director of The Central Hospital of Wuhan's emergency department, after it was removed by the authorities from the internet in China. ThinkChina traces how Chinese citizens banded together to keep an article alive, and shares a story of the "404 Building" written by a netizen.

Amid uncertainty, netizens are indulging in speculation about the origin of the Covid-19 virus. Their conjectures lead to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Wuhan is now a quarantine zone with a death toll in China of 17 and more than 570 infected. Cases have also been surfacing elsewhere such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and the US. In light of such rapid escalation, Yang Danxu questions why it has taken this long for the Chinese authorities to step up their crisis efforts.

The recent outbreak of a mystery pneumonia in Wuhan brings back memories of the 2003 SARS epidemic. How are the Chinese authorities responding differently this time, and are people sufficiently reassured?

In September this year, the Hangzhou municipal government started sending government officers to be attached to some private companies, sparking discussion and speculation over the motive behind such a move. What are these private companies concerned about, and are these concerns valid?