Life After Lockdown, and the Politics of Blaming China

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2020

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Since January, Peter Hessler has reported from China under quarantine. Now, as restrictions lift, he tells David Remnick about his return to normal life; recently, he even went to a dance club. But, although China’s stringent containment measures were effective enough to allow a rapid reopening, one scientist told Hessler, “There is no long-term plan. There’s no country that has a long term plan.” Back in Washington, Evan Osnos explains how blaming China for its sluggish response—and insisting that it cost lives worldwide—has become a touchstone of the Presidential race in America. The candidates have found a rare moment of agreement that it is time to get tough on China, and that their opponent is weak.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A couple of months ago, I called up Peter
0:15.3	Hessler, a staff writer who lives with his family in the Chinese city of Chengdu.
0:20.4	It was just before our country had started going into lockdown, but Peter and his wife and
0:24.9	his daughters had already been under strict quarantine since January, and he described exactly
0:30.6	what that was like.
0:32.3	Convenient stories were always open, kind of like small markets were always open.
0:37.3	A lot of people do stuff online anyway here.
0:39.5	Like there's some guy upstairs about like a hundred inch television, you know,
0:43.7	when you see them.
0:44.5	Peter is reporting now on the process of reopening China.
0:48.1	And I called him last week to see how that was going.
0:50.9	And because I, to be honest, was a little worried about some of this reporting.
0:55.9	Peter, I hear that you went to a dance club.
0:58.3	What on earth possessed you to do such a thing?
1:00.6	One of my former students was taking me out as a techno party.
1:04.9	Yeah, I was curious to see what, you know, is this really happening or people really going?
1:09.3	And it was a club and, you know, it was
1:11.7	mostly gay, young Chinese. Chung-Du was a pretty hip place and it's got a pretty active music
1:16.7	scene. And, you know, the sort of the promo material was all about, you know, nobody else and
1:22.2	the rest of the world can really do this. So let's show solidarity and have some fun, basically.
1:28.4	And was it packed in?
	...

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