Ren Zhiqiang, who disappeared a month ago, had assailed the Communist Party’s ‘crisis of governance’ and its inflexible culture.
amid reports that officials had covered up the emerging crisis and detained doctors in Wuhan who released information about the discovery of the novel coronavirus.Eight years into Xi’s administration, the government’s suppression of free speech and its demand for ideological conformity and exclusively positive media coverage — formally dubbed “spreading positive energy” — have become a source of discontent and private ridicule among some business elite and intellectuals.
On Wednesday, many mourned Ren’s downfall. Li Weidong, the former editor in chief of China Reform magazine, said that silencing Ren was the kind of political logic that exacerbated the viral outbreak in the first place.“I hope the Chinese Communist Party realizes that such party members who dare to tell the truth are needed in the party,” Li said. “If you shut up the few brave enough to speak the truth, disaster will descend.
In his February essay, Ren launched into another diatribe about the danger of propaganda as he recounted state media’s wall-to-wall coverage of Xi and his “great achievements” instead of reporting on the epidemic itself. He likened modern China to the Mao Zedong era, when young zealots cheered the party leader even as the country was seized by years of famine.
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