A Jersey Shore pizza shop owner has made the ultimate commitment to his employees as the Garden State's economy grapples with restrictions put in place to counter the coronavirus outbreak.
Bryan Morin, the owner of Federico's Pizzeria & Restaurant in Belmar, opened a $50,000 line of credit in order to continue paying his employees.
"It just seemed like the right thing to do," Morin told "Tucker Carlson Tonight". "I didn't want them to worry about me paying my mortgage, I didn't want these guys ... [to] have to worry about paying their rent, their utilities and insurance and other stuff."
Morin added that many of his employees have been with him for more than a decade and have essentially become members of his family.
Carlson said the restaurateur's action was "heroic," but noted that Federico's is not yet shut down, but rather forced to serve customers through takeout or delivery only
Morin said the line of credit is a security blanket of sorts in the event of a worst-case scenario.
"I took that money out just in case they did shut us down ... Currently, we are still working, but who knows, maybe one of the employees actually gets the virus and then we will be forced to close and self-quarantine for 14 days," Morin said.
"I just took this out to guarantee that my employees, no matter what, they'll continue to be able to pay their bills. You've got to take care of your employees. Without your employees, you don't have a business."
Pizzeria borrows to keep workers on job, spurs donations By Wayne Parry
In this March 26, 2020 photo provided by Maureen Morin and Federico's Pizza, staff members of the Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center give a thumbs-up in Neptune City, N.J., as they eat a donated meal from the Belmar, New Jersey pizzeria. With restaurants closed for all but takeout orders during the coronavirus outbreak, the owners of the pizzeria could have shut down and laid off their 20 employees. Instead, the business's owners took out a $50,000 line of credit and guaranteed their workers they'll stay on the payroll for at least two months. (Courtesy of Maureen Morin via AP)
BELMAR, N.J. (AP) — This is a story about bosses and their workers, in the dark days of COVID-19. It’s also a story about how one good turn deserves another and yet another.
And this being New Jersey, it’s also a story about pizza.
Bryan Morin and his brother Michael operate Federico’s Pizza in this Jersey Shore town. In the summer, they deliver cheese steak pizzas and 12-inch subs and garlic knots directly to the beach, a few blocks away. In winter, customers flock to the cozy, black-and-white tiled restaurant on Main Street.
But across the ocean, trouble brewed. Bryan Morin tossed and turned all night after watching news reports of how a virus spread rapidly in Italy, eventually bringing life to a virtual standstill and leading to massive layoffs as businesses closed down.
He could not let this happen at Federico’s.
Many of his employees have been with the business for a decade or more; the head cook has been there for 22 years, since the business was owned by Bryan and Michael’s father.
“I’m the provider for my employees; I supply their salary, and if they don’t have a salary, they won’t be able to afford their rent, their credit card bills, their insurance, their gas,” he said.
He decided to “do the right thing and take the hit, and I’ll make it up somewhere down the line.”
So about two weeks ago, he secured a $50,000 line of credit from his bank. He promised his workers they’d have a job for at least the next two months, come what may. He’d reassess conditions after that, but he’d do everything possible to keep the paychecks flowing.
As word of the brothers’ pledge got around, the community rallied round. Customers began helping out: an extra $10 on top of the usual 20% tip, a few bucks earmarked for the kitchen staff.
But then, something unexpected happened -- a surge of pay-it-forward donations.
People -- some who were ordering food, some who just wanted to help -- called and asked the pizzeria to charge their credit cards for food to be sent to those on the front lines of the virus response: Doctors, nurses and other staff at a nearby hospital, police, firefighters and EMS squads.
In just two days last week, Federico’s took in nearly $4,000 to make and deliver pizzas to first responders. Moments before Bryan Morin was interviewed last week, the pizzeria sent 30 free pizzas to Jersey Shore Medical Center, a vital battleground in the fight against COVID-19 in a state that has the second-most cases in the nation.
All because the boss cared.
“This is such a scary time, and so many people are getting laid off,” said Kirsten Phillips, who works the counter. “It was so unexpected what he did, but maybe it shouldn’t have been, because he always took care of us. This is really the best job I’ve ever had.”
___
While nonstop global news about the effects of the coronavirus have become commonplace, so, too, are the stories about the kindness of strangers and individuals who have sacrificed for others. “One Good Thing” is an AP continuing series reflecting these acts of kindness.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
___
Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
N.J. mattress and tablecloth companies flip to making medical masks for health care workers By Rodrigo Torrejon
In the age of a pandemic, what do a North Brunswick mattress company and a Paterson tablecloth factory have in common?
Both companies have decided to use their expertise to start making medical masks, fighting the dwindling supply of the critically needed and potentially life-saving masks for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak in New Jersey.
At its North Brunswick factory, mattress manufacturer Eclipse International will pivot from making mattresses to producing an initial batch of 38,000 masks, with plans to donate all the masks to healthcare workers who have been pleading for more supplies of protective gear. The first batch will be donated to the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, in New Brunswick, according to a statement.
The switch started when Stuart Carlitz, president and CEO of Eclipse International, watched a grim report of a shortage of the masks and realized much of the same materials were used for the mattresses he had been making for years.
“This all started Friday morning when I heard Governor Cuomo in New York talk about the fact that they were out of masks and scrambling to find them and that they were actually paying much higher prices than what masks were being sold for weeks earlier," said Stuart Carlitz, president and CEO of Eclipse International. “My first thought was that’s really terrible that people would take advantage of this time to profit.”
Looking down at masks his wife had given him to protect himself, Carlitz saw that one of the materials used in the mask were the same as in the mattresses: an Elite nonwoven fabric textile.
After ordering materials the company didn’t have, including elastic, the company is set to produce the three-layer masks, Carlitz said.
“I started researching on the internet for designs,” he said. “Sourcing the materials that I needed. We got our first delivery of elastic Monday morning. We immediately made several prototype masks.”
Additional materials came in Tuesday, with production expected to ramp up this week.
In Paterson, at the Tablecloth Company, which makes — you guessed it — table clothes, requests from customers to look into making masks prompted the company to work at some prototypes. Many of the requests came from customers at nursing homes, where outbreaks of the virus can often be deadly.
The flip to making the tiny, stretchy masks that just barely cover the mouth and nose is a learning experience for a company that puts together mattresses. Much less material is used, but machines need to be retrofitted and employees retrained.
But the unprecedented need calls for unprecedented changes. Eventually, if the first batch goes well, Carlitz has plans to expand to other places that need the masks. All of the masks though, will remain free.
“I’m not trying to sell masks,” said Carlitz. “Whether it’s a dollar apiece or four dollars apiece, that’s not going to change my business. I’m going to donate the masks.”
Fanatics to make medical gear instead of baseball uniforms
PHILADELPHIA -- The Bryce Harper jersey that could have been worn this baseball season by the biggest Philadelphia Phillies fan is now a protective mask in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Fanatics, the company that manufactures uniforms for Major League Baseball, has suspended production on jerseys and is instead using the polyester mesh fabric to make masks and gowns for hospitals in Pennsylvania and nearby states.
New York Yankees and Phillies pinstripes were still in vogue on baseball's scheduled Opening Day on Thursday -- only stitched on the protective wear made by the apparel company.
Michael Rubin, founder and executive chairman of Fanatics, was watching TV last week when he was struck by the idea to turn the 360,000-square-foot facility in Easton, Pennsylvania, into a factory for the COVID-19 virus fight.
We're proud to partner with @MLB to support emergency personnel who are fighting against COVID-19 and face a need for masks and hospital gowns. We're utilizing our manufacturing plant in Easton, PA to make masks and gowns out of the same jersey fabric that the players wear pic.twitter.com/5jEg1B2iUa
While Rubin considered how he could make it happen, St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, reached out to Fanatics late last week about the possibility of the company manufacturing masks. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Attorney General Josh Shapiro each contacted Rubin over the weekend and told Rubin the state was in "dire need" of more masks and gowns.
Fanatics developed a prototype that was approved by the state's emergency agency and by Tuesday the company halted production of all baseball jerseys.
Rubin, a limited ownership partner of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers and NHL's New Jersey Devils, said he had the blessing of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to stop producing jerseys.
"'We've got a million yards of fabric that we make these baseball uniforms from -- what would you think if we take that fabric and make masks and gowns?'" Rubin told The Associated Press what he said to Manfred. "He immediately said, 'Great. I want to do it immediately. The most important thing is we've got to help the heroes on the front line, and baseball can help play a role in it.'"
So with Manfred's support, production on the $300 jerseys for Harper, Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts and the rest of baseball's brightest stars was stopped. The company makes the uniforms for MLB and Nike.
Fanatics started fashioning masks and gowns on Tuesday, and Rubin hoped to produce nearly 15,000 masks and gowns a day. Rubin, whose Reform Alliance lobbies for changes to state probation and parole laws, said the demand was for 95% masks. The production plant had been shut down as a nonessential business, but about 100 workers have returned to work for Fanatics.
The company is making Level 1 masks, used for low-risk, nonsurgical procedures that are the accepted standard for surgical and procedural use.
Rubin said Wolf told Fanatics the state would pay for the masks and gowns. Rubin, though, said he spoke to Manfred, and Fanatics teamed with MLB to provide hospital uniforms at no cost to those in need in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Rubin, who has a net worth of $2.3 billion, according for Forbes, said it would cost Fanatics about $3 million to make the masks and gowns and the company would produce at least 1 million over the course of several months.
And if you are one of the few Phillies fans left who doesn't have a Harper jersey but want one?
"I think we've got them, but I'm not 100% sure," Rubin said with a laugh. "I know we can get a mask and a jersey made from one."
There was a bit of a dust-up this week when the Devils and 76ers did an about-face on cutting salaries for employees making more than $100,000. A day after announcing the temporary 20% pay cuts because of the economics effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the teams' co-owners rescinded them.
"As an organization, I don't believe we got right up front," Rubin said. "But I believe we got it right. I think people who know me, know I'm a transparent person. I believe when you get something wrong, you just kind of fix it. Ultimately, as an organization, we fixed it. I'm proud the organization came together and did the right thing by our employees. I think we'll be rewarded by our employees who will feel we did the right thing. We got to the right place."
But when it comes to Fanatics assisting in the coronavirus fight, Rubin added, "We're less worried about manufacturing jerseys and more worried about just saving lives."
January 31, 2020 People wear masks in Hong Kong, China, January 31, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
Navigating the outbreak in a world of endless unverified information
Certain news stories drive me to an unhealthy reliance on social media. With my infant daughter sleeping in a bassinet beside me, I watched a series of individually broadcast livestreams of the mayhem developing in Paris on November 13, 2015. I suppose the first step is admitting you have a problem.
I doubt I’m the only person who seems to find every discomfiting YouTube video or Twitter thread about developments out of Wuhan, China.
Even just having your digital ear open for the chatter, you hear that Shanghai has been almost entirely “shut down,” with its residents driven to social-media boredom and rumormongering. You hear that Wuhan has been half-evacuated. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it would look like to evacuate half of a city that is larger than New York or London. Or wonder what that might mean for the rest of China, absorbing a population of that size, when the coronavirus is contagious well before it shows symptoms.
As in all tragedies, the alt-right-ish comedian Sam Hyde has been falsely and hilariously blamed for the spread of coronavirus. Earlier in the week there was a long Twitter thread by Matt Parlmer, urging people to look at the signs coming from China — the massive shutdowns and travel restrictions — that signaled a number of very likely events to anticipate, namely the disruption of global supply chains and international travel. This has now happened, and we are on the way to its being a global emergency. Firsthand accounts about how under-resourced Wuhan is for this outbreak are sprawling across YouTube. Here’s a particularly vivid one, with rumors that the virus has been known about by cab drivers in Wuhan since mid-December.
Today, a verified account on Twitter that I’ve never seen claimed that Indian scientists had discovered traces of HIV in the coronavirus. For all I know this is a totally scientifically illiterate thing to say. But there the claim is, with uncertain authority, which bolsters the conspiracy theories that the coronavirus is the product of a Chinese biological-weapons facility located near Wuhan.
Many goodhearted and decent people are on social media urging restraint. New contagious diseases are, of course, prone to induce panic. They warn us not to share any information that isn’t from a reputable public-health organization.
I wish the human mind could be reassured and calmed this way. Waiting for the official statements has actually worsened the pit in my stomach. For half the week there was speculation across unverified social media that the World Health Organization was dragging its feet because it didn’t want to embarrass China or imply that such a large and important country was responding poorly. Finally, on Thursday this week, the World Health Organization declared an international emergency. And in its statement, it cringingly praised China: “The Committee emphasized that the declaration of a PHEIC [Public Health Emergency of International Concern] should be seen in the spirit of support and appreciation for China, its people, and the actions China has taken on the frontlines of this outbreak, with transparency, and, it is to be hoped, with success.” Even the unidiomatic English grammar somehow has me imagining a Chinese official with extremely specific instructions dictating to the WHO.
The White House press briefing also contained statements emphasizing that the U.S. efforts to monitor and contain coronavirus are “complementing” China’s efforts. I’d rather have no comment appraising China’s performance in this crisis rather than ones that seem so forced and emphasized.
Maybe in the days to come, government authorities will get ahead of this public-health crisis and, like SARS, it will cause great anguish but not fundamentally disrupt the order of things. But our public officials need to think hard about how they communicate in a new world in which they are far from the only source of compelling information. Or perhaps the interruptions in the supply chain lead to major economic disruption worldwide and make everyone question the wisdom of placing so much critical industrial and commercial infrastructure in the middle of country that still contains hygiene practices known only amid extremely poverty, and a Communist government that regularly lies to the public, to itself, and to the world.
Until then, I’ll be nervously twitching through my phone and stocking up the pantry.
The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies By Jim Geraghty
Paramilitary officers wearing face masks to contain the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus walk along a street in Beijing, China, March 18, 2020. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)
On today’s menu: a day-by-day, month-by-month breakdown of China’s coronavirus coverup and the irreparable damage it has caused around the globe.
The Timeline of a Viral Ticking Time Bomb
The story of the coronavirus pandemic is still being written. But at this early date, we can see all kinds of moments where different decisions could have lessened the severity of the outbreak we are currently enduring. You have probably heard variations of: “Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be transferred from human to human until it was too late.” What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.
Clearly, the U.S. government’s response to this threat was not nearly robust enough, and not enacted anywhere near quickly enough. Most European governments weren’t prepared either. Few governments around the world were or are prepared for the scale of the danger. We can only wonder whether accurate and timely information from China would have altered the way the U.S. government, the American people, and the world prepared for the oncoming danger of infection.
Some point in late 2019: The coronavirus jumps from some animal species to a human being. The best guess at this point is that it happened at a Chinese “wet market.”
December 6: According to a study in The Lancet,the symptom onset date of the first patient identified was “Dec 1, 2019 . . . 5 days after illness onset, his wife, a 53-year-old woman who had no known history of exposure to the market, also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalized in the isolation ward.” In other words, as early as the second week of December, Wuhan doctors were finding cases that indicated the virus was spreading from one human to another.
Sometime in “Late December”: Wuhan hospitals notice “an exponential increase” in the number of cases that cannot be linked back to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
December 30: Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to a group of other doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), urging them to take protective measures against infection.
Tao Lina, a public-health expert and former official with Shanghai’s center for disease control and prevention, tells the South China Morning Post, “I think we are [now] quite capable of killing it in the beginning phase, given China’s disease control system, emergency handling capacity and clinical medicine support.”
January 1: The Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued summons to Dr. Li Wenliang, accusing him of “spreading rumors.” Two days later, at a police station, Dr. Li signed a statement acknowledging his “misdemeanor” and promising not to commit further “unlawful acts.” Seven other people are arrested on similar charges and their fate is unknown.
According to a New York Times study of cellphone data from China, 175,000 people leave Wuhan that day. According to global travel data research firm OAG, 21 countries have direct flights to Wuhan. In the first quarter of 2019 for comparison, 13,267 air passengers traveled from Wuhan, China, to destinations in the United States, or about 4,422 per month. The U.S. government would not bar foreign nationals who had traveled to China from entering the country for another month.
January 3:The Chinese government continued efforts to suppress all information about the virus: “China’s National Health Commission, the nation’s top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.”
Roughly one month after the first cases in Wuhan, the United States government is notified. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gets initial reports about a new coronavirus from Chinese colleagues, according to Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar. Azar, who helped manage the response at HHS to earlier SARS and anthrax outbreaks, told his chief of staff to make sure the National Security Council was informed.
Wang Linfa, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said he was frustrated that scientists in China were not allowed to speak to him about the outbreak. Dr. Wang said, however, that he thought the virus was likely not spreading from humans to humans because health workers had not contracted the disease. “We should not go into panic mode,” he said.
Don’t get too mad at Wang Linfa; he was making that assessment based upon the inaccurate information Chinese government was telling the world.
January 10: After unknowingly treating a patient with the Wuhan coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang started coughing and developed a fever. He was hospitalized on January 12. In the following days, Li’s condition deteriorated so badly that he was admitted to the intensive care unit and given oxygen support.
Also on this day, political leaders in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, began their regional meeting. The coronavirus was not mentioned over four days of meetings.
January 14: Wuhan city health authorities release another statement declaring, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.” Wuhan doctors have known this was false since early December, from the first victim and his wife, who did not visit the market.
This is five or six weeks after the first evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan.
January 15:Japan reported its first case of coronavirus. Japan’s Health Ministry said the patient had not visited any seafood markets in China, adding that “it is possible that the patient had close contact with an unknown patient with lung inflammation while in China.”
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission begins to change its statements, now declaring, “Existing survey results show that clear human-to-human evidence has not been found, and the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out, but the risk of continued human-to-human transmission is low.” Recall Wuhan hospitals concluded human-to-human transmission was occurring three weeks earlier. A statement the next day backtracks on the possibility of human transmission, saying only, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.”
January 19: The Chinese National Health Commission declares the virus “still preventable and controllable.” The World Health Organization updates its statement, declaring, “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread, or its source, which remains unknown.”
That day, the head of China’s national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected.
By this point, millions of people have left Wuhan, carrying the virus all around China and into other countries.
January 22: WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued to praise China’s handling of the outbreak. “I was very impressed by the detail and depth of China’s presentation. I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.”
At a meeting of the WHO Emergency Committee, panel members express “divergent views on whether this event constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC.”
January 23: Chinese authorities announce their first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan. By this point, millions have already visited the city and left it during the Lunar New Year celebrations. Singapore and Vietnam report their first cases, and by now an unknown but significant number of Chinese citizens have traveled abroad as asymptomatic, oblivious carriers.
January 24: Vietnam reports person-to-person transmission, and Japan, South Korea, and the U.S report their second cases. The second case is in Chicago. Within two days, new cases are reported in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Arizona. The virus is in now in several locations in the United States, and the odds of preventing an outbreak are dwindling to zero.
On February 1, Dr. Li Wenliang tested positive for coronavirus. He died from it six days later.
One final note: On February 4, Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella urged residents to hug Chinese people to encourage them in the fight against the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, a member of Associazione Unione Giovani Italo Cinesi, a Chinese society in Italy aimed at promoting friendship between people in the two countries, called for respect for novel coronavirus patients during a street demonstration. “I’m not a virus. I’m a human. Eradicate the prejudice.”
A woman wearing a protective mask walks past a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping on a street as the country is hit by an outbreak of the coronavirus in Shanghai, China, March 12, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)
The regime’s censorship and distortions are a threat to global public health as well as a violation of human rights.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has a new slogan: “Zero” — the goal of reducing to zero the number of cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, aka COVID-19. Reaching zero is crucial to achieving his broader goal of global leadership and domination. Xi must show the world that the totalitarian Chinese political system is vindicated by the defeat of the virus. The truth about COVID-19 inside China is the greatest obstacle to his ambition.
For years now, Beijing has tried to position China under the Communist Party as the champion and leader of a new, emerging, post-American global order. At the Davos conclave in 2017, Xi spoke of his government’s determination to play a responsible role in defending and contributing to multilateral efforts to “secure peace and reduce poverty.” He was applauded for opposing protectionism. All states, he intoned, should “view their own interests in a broader context” and “refrain from pursuing their own interests at the expense of others.” China has assiduously asserted influence in global institutions, especially United Nations bodies, where Chinese nationals lead four of 15 specialized agencies. In his speech at the special summit of G20 leaders on March 26, Xi showed his determination to build his own image as a world leader.
For him to succeed in his long march through the international community, he needs to have a reputation for success at addressing challenges such as COVID-19. As two veteran China watchers, Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, pointed out in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, one’s legitimacy as a global leader depends on domestic governance, the provision of global public goods, and the ability and willingness to muster and coordinate a global response to crises. To lead the world response to the pandemic, China must set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
The long-term plan hit a large speed bump with revelations about the regime’s malfeasance in covering up COVID-19, and the Communist Party’s efforts to turn the story around, making itself heroic, are well documented. But the plan could run aground if a second outbreak, which some experts warn is inevitable, occurs in China. In this situation, the regime is turning reflexively to traditional Communist tactics: propaganda and the control of information.
Neutralizing Independent Media
China has expelled reporters for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, sources it cannot control. The regime has clamped down increasingly on independent journalists as its domestic practices have become increasingly inhumane, especially with respect to its repression of religious minorities, including Uighur Muslims, who have been subjected to mass internment.
China ranks low in international measures of press freedom. Last year, in a survey of 180 countries with respect to media independence, media pluralism, and respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, Reporters Without Borders ranked China 177th. In “Control, Halt, Delete: Reporting in China Under Threat of Expulsion,” a new report from the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC), foreign journalists document practices that Chinese authorities have employed that have severely affected their reporting.
Beijing has delayed and placed restrictions on visas for foreign journalists. While the standard length of a long-term journalist visa, J-1, is one year, many foreign correspondents who have reported critically about the Chinese regime have received curtailed visas. In 2018, five correspondents received curtailed visas. In 2019, at least a dozen received visas for six months or less. Truncated visas require frequent renewal, and Beijing has made that process more arduous not just for the journalists but for their families as well. This practice is called out in the FCCC report.
Three correspondents from Wall Street Journal were expelled on February 19 over an opinion piece critical of Beijing’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” the headline read. In announcing the expulsions, a foreign-ministry spokesman called the article “racist.” It was the first time in more than two decades that journalists holding valid credentials had been ordered to leave China, although since 2013 others have been expelled in effect, through non-renewal of their visas.
Beijing has also established red lines for foreign correspondents. In particular, anything critical of Xi Jinping and his family is forbidden. Last year, Beijing declined to renew the credentials of another Wall Street Journal reporter, who had reported about investigations, in Australia, into the activities of one of Xi’s cousins, who was suspected of involvement in organized crime and money laundering. In the FCCC report, the bureau chief of an English-language news organization is quoted as saying that the Chinese foreign ministry had explicitly told them that they would face the “anger of other arms of the government,” and not just the foreign ministry, if they wrote the “wrong pieces about Xi.”
Criticism of the treatment of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang has also drawn the ire of the authorities. In 2018, Megha Rajagopalan, the Beijing bureau chief for BuzzFeed News, was unable to renew her visa. During her six years in China, Rajagopalan had reported extensively on human-rights abuses, including the detention of Uighurs and others in Xinjiang province. The Committee to Protect Journalists considers the government’s refusal to renew visas in such cases to be “acts of retribution.”
Last year, CNN’s Beijing correspondent Matt Rivers reported extensively on how, during his trip to Xinjiang province, he had been subjected to repeated visa checks, harassment by local officials, attempts by the authorities to block his reporting, and physical trailing. The FCCC report adds that Chinese authorities, through intimidation and explicit warnings, regularly pressure people to avoid speaking to foreign media representatives. Journalists and their sources are monitored by facial recognition and other surveillance techniques.
Of course, China also extensively censors new media. A Harvard University study found that Chinese authorities block as many as 18,000 websites, including many standard, independent sources of international news. Among the terms censored on the Internet are “human rights,” “oppression,” and references to Tiananmen Square and the dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. The BBC, which had often reported critically on the Chinese government, is blocked in China. All books published in China are censored. The extent of censorship and control over the media by the CCP cannot be better described than by Xi Jinping himself, who in 2016 said, “All the media must bear the Party’s surname.”
Breaking the Media Blockage
The Zero campaign depends on censorship and makes it a universal political obligation for Chinese citizens to collectively deny their own public-health crisis. That China’s health statistics are manipulated for the Communist Party’s political benefit is not news. Local officials, medical personnel, and, indeed, the entire society need to participate in the deception. It is the newest of a string of impossible tasks that the Communist Party has demanded of the Chinese people, reminiscent of Mao’s absurd productivity quotas, and of his often-lethal punishments for failure. As Roger Scruton observed, “it takes infinite force to make people to do what is impossible.”
The government, which claims that virtually no new COVID-19 cases have appeared recently in Wuhan, has begun to relax the lockdown in Hubei Province. But while the Chinese regime tries to control perceptions of events inside the country, widespread anger and intensified distrust at the government’s moral and administrative failures is giving rise to a groundswell of citizen journalists attempting to break through the official propaganda machinery of CCTV, CGTN, People’s Daily, and Global Times and to expose what is happening.
The evidence they present about COVID-19 contradicts official narratives. Stories on Chinese social media, censored or removed almost as soon as they appear, reveal how local governments cover up new cases and how hospitals are ordered to report new cases as normal flu or pneumonia.
The stories indicate that Hubei Province, far from moving toward normality, is being locked down again by people and police in the surrounding provinces who know the real situation in Hubei. One video showed a riot that occurred when Hubei police tried to open the border with Jiangxi — people and police in Jiangxi revolted because they would be exposed to Hubei.The government brags about mass recoveries from the virus, but independent media have reported that up to 14 percent of those have tested positive again. The regime appears to be cooking the books on epidemiological statistics, to be not counting cases in which tests indicate infection but people are asymptomatic. Censors almost immediately removed a photo from the Caixin website showing a truck delivering 2,500 urns filled with the ashes of cremated people. Censors removed as well as an accompanying reportthat a truck had made another such delivery the same day.
In the past, the Chinese Communist Party’s restrictions on the free flow of information seemed to Americans and others in democratic countries to be a matter mainly concerning the freedom of the Chinese people, important as a matter of upholding the universal right to freedom of expression. But the regime’s distortions of the truth are now more than abstract problems for the international community. They are threats to global public health — indeed, matters of life and death.
Jianli Yang is the founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. Aaron Rhodes is the human-rights editor of Dissident magazine and the president of the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe.
