WN TBD: Coronavirus Tests China's Surveillance State
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2020
⏱️ 16 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Life in Beijing right now is pretty bizarre, very post-apocalyptic. |
| 0:10.6 | This is Josh Chinn. |
| 0:11.6 | He's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and he's been living and reporting in China |
| 0:15.6 | for the last 10 years. |
| 0:16.7 | It's a city of 20 million people or more depending on the time of year, and for the last few |
| 0:22.2 | weeks it's been almost completely empty. |
| 0:25.6 | I try to go out every day just to maintain my sanity, but it's only really supermarkets |
| 0:33.3 | and a handful of restaurants that are still open. |
| 0:36.4 | No traffic. |
| 0:37.4 | You walk down the street, you can actually hear birds chirping, which almost never happens. |
| 0:42.1 | You know, and this is one of the most populous cities in the world, and on most days it's |
| 0:46.4 | cacophonous, and there are people everywhere. |
| 0:49.7 | And now you go out and there's none. |
| 0:52.7 | The Bureau of the Coronavirus has kept most people at home for weeks now, since the start |
| 0:57.1 | of the Lunar New Year holiday in late January. |
| 1:01.0 | But even though people aren't outside that much these days, that doesn't mean they're |
| 1:04.0 | not being watched. |
| 1:05.9 | As a journalist in China, Josh is accustomed to it. |
| 1:08.6 | But you also kind of get used to it, and I think a lot of people in China just have that |
| 1:12.6 | sense and it sort of fades into the background after a while. |
| 1:16.9 | But now with coronavirus, things have escalated. |
| 1:20.4 | More than 60,000 people have gotten sick worldwide, at least 1,300 have died. |
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