‘A floodgate has been opened’ as calls for free speech and democracy follow death of Li Wenliang, who was detained by police for warning about ‘SARS-like’ virus
Li Wenliang wears a respirator mask, following the coronavirus outbreak, in Wuhan, China, February 3, 2020, in this picture obtained from social media.Fury, grief and open demands for democratic freedoms erupted in China Friday following the death of a doctor detained by police after he warned about the appearance of a new virus in Wuhan in December.
“A floodgate has been opened,” said Lynette Ong, a scholar of authoritarian politics at the University of Toronto.Rarely has so much public condemnation become so plainly visible in modern China. “I do believe this is a historical moment. A structural shift is coming, and time will tell what it amounts to," she said. “It may not amount to anything this time, but everything is cumulative.”
The ability to “concentrate resources to solve major problems” is a “notable advantage of China's socialist system that has helped the country overcome major challenges over the past decades. The novel coronavirus will be no exception,” the state-run Xinhua news agency said in one of two commentaries published late Thursday night.
Though such criticism is not new, widespread fear of the viral outbreak has made it a personal concern for much of the world’s most populous country. Locking down vast numbers of people has left a population with little to do but stew over what has gone wrong.
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