Being able to no longer ignore or pretend it wasn’t happening, the so called “journalists” as the New York Times finally acknowledged the little matter of China’s forced humanitarian lockdown crisis, the Times ran a story Tuesday headlined, “China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Mess Proves Autocracy Hurts Everyone.” The sub-headline explained, “The fear in China is that the strict coronavirus policy has become another Mao-style political campaign with devastating effects.”

The article begins by describing China’s great sparrow extermination of 1958, after Chairman Mao blamed wild sparrows for his failing agricultural policy, declared the hapless birds to be pests, and called for up to 2 billion birds to be killed nationwide. The near extinction of Chinese sparrows predictably led to insect infestations (nature abhors a vacuum), which ruined crops and contributed to the Great Famine that starved tens of millions of Chinese to death in the next three years. That’s how central planning “works” when you’re never allowed to question the central planners.

The Times implies China’s zero-Covid policy is like Mao’s zero-sparrow policy. It quotes Ye Qing, a Chinese legal scholar, who wrote “They’re not countering the pandemic. They’re creating disasters.” Don’t bother searching for Ye’s online article as it was “swiftly deleted.” Cancelled for speaking out against the regime, sound familiar, no wonder Trudeau has a soft spot in his heart, opps body for China.

“This disease has been politicized,” Zhu Weiping, an official in Shanghai’s disease control office, told a person who called to complain about the city’s response to the ongoing outbreak. In a recorded phone call that was shared widely before being censored, the official said she’d advised the government to let people with no or mild symptoms quarantine at home and instead focus on vaccination drives. But no one listened, she explained to the caller.

As of Monday, estimates suggest as many as 45 large Chinese cities are under full or partial lockdown.

Lang Xianping, a party-line Chinese economist, previously bragged on his verified Weibo account that the lockdowns demonstrated “the power of China.” But on Monday, he reported that his mother had died after the city’s Covid restrictions delayed treatment for her kidney disease. “I hope tragedies like this won’t happen again,” he wrote. Isn’t it odd that folks who favour and advocate insane policies, seem to do so when said policies everyone else but them, and as soon as those policies negatively impact them in any way, they’re the first ones calling for the abolition of them.

The Times ended the story by quoting Lawrence Li, a business consultant in Shanghai. “We believe that sacrificing minority interests in favor of the collective is just.” Like many Chinese, he said what’s happening in Shanghai echoes Mao’s 1958 zero-sparrow campaign. “History repeats itself again and again,” he said.

Although the article diligently avoids describing the most appalling stories emerging from the shuttered city, the mere fact that The Times is finally reporting about the lockdowns, however timidly, is a good sign. The Chinese government and those controlling it are public relations whores, they fear embarrassment more than anything else, and their obviously disastrous attempt to centrally plan a lockdown is more than embarrassing, it’s deadly. Given their own citizens don’t have a voice, and cannot sway policy, it’s up to “western media” to expose what’s happening and given enough media coverage “embarrass” China on the world stage, thereby forcing those in charge to course correct.
While it’s not a lot, at least this article is a bit of good news for the Chinese people, unfortunately of course they’ll never hear about it.

I wonder if our very own central planner in Ottawa is taking notes.