It’s no secret China has desperately attempted to control the narrative on all things relating to the Wuhan coronavirus. Professor Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, discusses the importance the Chinese government places on perception. “In terms of priority, controlling the narrative is more important than the public health or the economic fallout,” Tsang said. “It doesn’t mean the economy and public health aren’t important. But the narrative is paramount” for the Chinese government.
That’s not very comforting as the world has to rely on China for critical pieces of information relating to the origins and spread of this horrible virus. Even more devastating, the research that is being done on the virus is completely controlled by the Chinese government which is “cracking down on publication of academic research about the origins of the novel coronavirus” according to the Guardian. The Guardian reported on documents published online by Chinese universities which show, the crackdown “is likely to be part of a wider attempt to control the narrative surrounding the pandemic.”
China is particularly sensitive to the research being done on the origins of COVID-19. The Guardian’s article states, “two websites for leading Chinese universities appear to have recently published and then removed pages that reference a new policy requiring academic papers dealing with COVID-19 to undergo extra vetting before they are submitted for publication.”
China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) announced it is conducting coronavirus research on its website, and also published, and then deleted, the new requirements “that academic papers dealing with the origins of the virus be approved by China’s ministry of science and technology before publication.” If the mandate itself could not be published, certainly the approval of any real research by the ministry is a fairy tale.
[inline_posts type=”IDs” box_title=”COVID-19 UPDATE” align=”alignleft” textcolor=”#800101″ background=”#dedede”]4070, 4109[/inline_posts]The Guardian also obtained a separate document from the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University which also said any publication of research on COVID-19 must get approval from the science and technology ministry as well. The Guardian notes the document could not be independently verified, but it is consistent with all information and reports seeping out of China.
Additional supporting evidence is on April 3rd, the science and technology ministry declared any clinical research of the virus needed to be reported to authorities within three days. On April 9th, the school of information and technology at Fudan University in Shanghai called for “strict and serious” management of papers investigating the source of the outbreak. Once again, the research needed approval by a “special office.”
