The coronavirus should scare the West. But not necessarily only because of the virus itself. It should scare us, because most of us are unwilling to learn from China how they stopped the virus.
We refuse to learn from China, because after all, China will always be remembered as the one and only source of the coronavirus. The blame is put on the secretively wildlife farms selling disease-transmitting animals on wet markets in China. In response, China has banned the trade of all wildlife animals. But what if a more likely source of the virus is a bat that infected livestock? The bigger issue is not wildlife, but the fact that China has a food quality problem despite the tighter controls the central government has enforced against food producers. Prohibition will just increase the black market without the necessary regulation, and could in fact increase the problem.
In my book China’s New Normal I wrote in 2019: “If there is anything that keeps the Chinese government awake at night, it is food safety issues. China is currently faced with huge problems, such as mounting state debt, slowing growth, environmental concerns and trade restrictions, to name but a few. However, there is a reasonable expectation that these problems can be resolved with the right planning, right strategy and the setting of the right priorities. But scandals involving food or medication is of a different order. They create distrust and potential social unrest and the finger of guilt is usually pointed at the government, which after a decade of similar scandals still is unable to control the companies and enforce its own legislation”. The virus outbreak was written in the stars… After all, this is not the first time this happens. This illustrates the limitations of China’s governance and maybe even the lack of learning from past mistakes.
We refrain to learn from China, because they covered-up the outbreak of the coronavirus for almost 3 weeks after Dr. Li Wenliang notified other experts of a potential virus outbreak. Dr. Li was reprimanded by local authorities to break the law by disrupting the social order. He died a month later from that same virus which angered many in China and the world. A similar story unveiled as the mayor of Wuhan admitted that he hadn’t disclosed information in a timely manner, pointing out that local government was obliged to seek permission from Beijing before fully disclosing information about the virus.
What is obvious is that China’s censorship had backfired on its main purpose to avoid social unrest and ensuring the people’s well-being by providing them a better life. We call it a cover-up, but in reality, every mess-up of authorities in China can be labelled as a cover-up because of China’s censoring system. As China had first-hand experienced the SARS outbreak, it’s more likely to be a system problem than a voluntarily cover-up of authorities. In response, China’s state media acknowledged that in the age of social media, government agencies cannot hide information even if they want to, and has sought to be more transparent in its reporting of the coronavirus as compared with the restricted coverage during the SARS outbreak of 2003. China’s censorship model is being challenged from within.
We ignore to learn from China, because of the questionable decision the government took to deprive people and businesses from their freedom for over a month. Considering the sudden existential crisis Xi Jinping and the Party faced end of January, it is not surprising to see why Beijing took matters in their own hands in the most directive manner. The quarantining of the 11 million people of Wuhan condemned them to confinement to save the rest of China and the world. But not just Wuhan was affected, millions of migrant workers stranded in their hometown, many small businesses on the verge of collapse, and whole industries that were shut down for weeks.
China’s government decided to let the economy and people suffer for many weeks to sustain the long-term dream. China decided once again to take the collective benefit over that of individuals. It mobilised everyone (people and businesses) to support the fight against the virus. This was hard to imagine in democratic countries, but now that Italy has put 60 million people in quarantine, one can question if this approach is really about regime or simply the best way a new virus outbreak should be handled? As the Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst said: "the Medieval approach works".
We don’t want to learn from China, because of the many mistakes made, but the truth is that nobody had any idea about this novel virus back then, and China was the COVID-19 lab-rat for the world. China learned a ton of information over the past 7 weeks about the virus and its treatment. Once China fully realised the danger, it offered the world a unique guideline on how to deal with such a crisis. China wasted 3 weeks of critical time at the beginning, but has later on given the world an extra month of time to prepare for the global outbreak. The second act doesn’t excuse the first one. I dare however not to imagine if the second act would have been one of denial as is still the case in many countries now.
China has dealt with the epidemic in an impressive way as praised by world health organisation (WHO). We might not have noticed, but China engaged in a global and open dialogue in an unprecedented way, providing insights to WHO and requesting independent observers to participate in the fight. Today, China is helping Italy to cope with their outbreak, and that is how it should be.
We ignore to learn from China, because we distrust the number of infected cases and deaths China discloses. I am concerned to see this, as I have witnessed quite a different pattern from past propaganda communications. The creation and use of new applications and websites dedicated to the latest updates on the virus effects are consulted by every Chinese. Dedicated QR codes, travel information, checks if you have been travelling in proximity of an infected person and risk assessments are pushed by companies to inform people. The numbers outside of the epicentre region confirm the same exponential infection rate as outside China today, so why would they be incorrect? Most importantly, the corona tests and treatments in China are free, but only if the patient is known, so obviously people will want to be part of the statistics if infected. I trust the numbers as much as I trust our own numbers. As for the cost of treatment, Europe seems better prepared than America where 13,7% of the population is uninsured. Because currently, only 5 citizens in US are tested per 1 million people, can we trust these numbers more?
As I am no virologist, I cannot comment on how a virus should be best handled. Many health experts advocate to learn from China and adopt more stringent measures to contain the epidemic. I do appreciate we don’t feel comfortable learning from China, but let’s set aside our differences with China, and look at a virus for what it is – an epidemic that does not discriminate on race, ideology, policy or geography
What I can expand on is how China has been handling the corona virus with technology. I believe the West can learn heaps from how China has adopted innovation in its society in a time of crisis. When China faces a crisis, Chinese don't see it merely as a worry, but also an opportunity or moment of action. It's part of the Chinese character for crisis or weiji 危机. The character has two parts, and the first part means danger 危险, while the second part means opportunity 机会,or point of change 转机.That double meaning resonates with me because I have never seen any country like China that knows how to deal with a crisis, by taking swift, decisive action to ultimately get an opportunities out of it.
That is what you could see in the deployment of technology to solve the coronavirus outbreak today. One such example are drones, for which China is the leading innovator-producer worldwide. Drones are being deployed everywhere in the cities to see if people are wearing their masks, to disinfect areas, and to make sure that the temperature of people with the camera sensors showed that it wasn't too high. Swarms of drones scouting the whole country.
Robots also came to the rescue. Everywhere on the streets you could see self-driving delivery cars hovering around to deliver groceries to people in lock-down. Companies like JD.com and Meituan had been building them for the past few years, but now could send out their army of test-vehicles to work. As the streets were empty it was a near-perfect test environment. Service robots from Pudu Technology got activated in more than 40 hospitals to help medical staff get medical equipment, medicine and take garbage out without any human intervention. Robots were helping people.
In the meantime, we all know that China became the leader in mobile payment. That early transformation was a blessing in tackling this crisis as nobody wanted to touch paper cash anymore. Due to the corona virus outbreak, the country is now ready to become the first true cashless society. Combined with China’s vast network of the online delivery industry, powered by the most advanced AI dispatching systems, China could supply millions of residents their daily groceries without a need for citizens to leave their homes. These two already ubiquitous innovations in China undeniably slowed down the further outbreak of infections. China’s past digital revolution has saved many lives.
One of the more controversial applications in China is surveillance, with millions of cameras positioned all over the country. These cameras run face recognition software from AI companies such as Sensetime or Megvii to detect fevers in crowds; identifying if people are wearing masks; even identifying people wearing masks. This raises the question whether these privacy-invasive technologies would stay around after the crisis is over? But China’s face recognition leadership has certainly served its purpose well last month.
Most impressive is how a company in Shanghai called WinSun has been printing a 3D 'quarantine' house every two hours; sending dozens of isolation rooms every day to hospitals. State-of-the-art Chinese technology that was effective immediately. In addition, China built two corona hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days, accommodating 1000 beds each. These examples make the meaning of China-speed a lot more tangible.
Incredible are the number of apps Chinese are use during this standstill. Office apps and collaboration tools like DingTalk from Alibaba, Tencent’s Wechat and Lark from Bytedance spiked like crazy. As every employee was stuck at home they had to use apps to work remotely. Because schools closed, with students staying at home, so teachers couldn't teach. Teachers started video streaming using apps such as BilliBilli, Kuaishou or Tik Tok, to stream their lessons to the students. Some teachers even became overnight web celebrities. Alibaba was even helping teachers to improve their video streaming. For a culture that breathes on face-to-face connections, they learned the benefits of remote working, which could help resolve major challenges in China such as mobility or environment.
Meanwhile, advanced AI has been used to help diagnose the corona virus and to find a vaccine. Alibaba has released an application that can help doctors to analyse lung X-rays to determine if a patient has COVID-19 within 20 seconds with an accuracy of 96%. Another company called Xiaohongshu launched an anti-epidemic psychological assistance platform, engaging 1000 counselors to provide 24/7 psychological counseling to frontline medical staff or anyone affected by the corona virus.
Most important is that most of these apps are for free for everyone. The reason that the companies do that is out of solidarity to help tackle the crisis, but in a way it's also an opportunity for them to acquire more users. That is the pragmatism of China. As for the government, President Xi Jinping has put 5G networks and data centers on top of huge spending plans to salvage the economy. China’s new infrastructure investments to rebound from a crisis includes technology now.
The scale and speed of this innovation, technology and adoption of technology in Chinese society, in a time of deep crisis, shows what China is truly capable of. There has been a lot of criticism in the West about China since the start of the epidemic; but that one-sided view is losing its appeal as China has shown to the world that it has been extremely effective in handling the virus outbreak; especially with its immediate deployment of technology to manage the outbreak. I have not yet seen many similar deployments of technology in Western countries to tackle the same crisis, while we had one more month extra time to prepare. My worry is that once the corona crisis passes, the West will have become more anxious, more risk-averse and much less connected. The closing borders in the EU are a stark sign of that scenario. In the meantime China will likely become more cooperative, responsible and proud.
That increasing divide probably scares me more than the virus itself.