How far can the Chinese government be blamed for Covid-19?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ever since a mysterious virus was reported in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the world has been watching China.
Silenced whistleblowers, unregulated wildlife trade in wet markets, limited international cooperation, and even a local biosafety lab have been held up as examples of how China mishandled the crisis. But how far can it be blamed for Covid-19 becoming a pandemic?
This week on The Inquiry, Kavita Puri asks what the Chinese government could, or should, have done differently to prevent a global catastrophe.
Producer: Eleanor Biggs Presenter: Kavita Puri
(A man drags a handcart across an emptied road on February 5, 2020 during lockdown in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Kavita Puri. |
| 0:05.0 | Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. It was nearly six in the evening on December the 30th, 2019, |
| 0:19.0 | and Li Wen Liang, a Chinese doctor, was worried. He typed a private message on a |
| 0:25.0 | private message on a chat group to his friends from medical school. |
| 0:29.4 | He wrote, there's been seven confirmed cases of SARS from the local seafood market in |
| 0:36.0 | Uwahan. SARS was the deadly virus that had struck in 2002. He warned his friends not to share these messages and to take precautions. |
| 0:49.0 | But screenshots of his warnings soon circulated on Chinese social media. Days later, Dr Wen Yang |
| 0:55.9 | was summoned by local police and reprimanded for making false accusations and disturbing |
| 1:02.0 | public order. |
| 1:03.6 | He was threatened with further punishment if he repeated the rumors. |
| 1:08.3 | He went back to his patients without personal protective equipment. |
| 1:17.3 | Five weeks later, he was dead from the very virus he'd warned of. |
| 1:19.1 | He was 34. We all know what happened next. That SARS-like illness was a different coronavirus, COVID-19. |
| 1:30.0 | It's now spread across the world killing hundreds of thousands of people |
| 1:36.8 | And the blame game has started as deaths mount in the United States |
| 1:42.1 | President Donald Trump tweeted, |
| 1:44.0 | the incompetence of China did this mass worldwide killing. |
| 1:49.0 | He's claimed the virus started in a lab in Wuhan. |
| 1:52.0 | Others point to China's unregulated markets, letting |
| 1:56.0 | wildlife spread the virus. |
| 1:59.0 | And then there's the silencing of doctors like Li Wen Yang. silen-Liang. So this week we ask how far the Chinese government be blamed for COVID-19. Part 1, censored. |
| 2:15.0 | I think has been a roller coaster. |
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