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According to estimates, more than 600 million surveillance cameras are keeping an eye on China’s public. One company that particularly benefits from this is SenseTime. The tech company supplies the police with image recognition and analysis software, enabling authorities to digitally track passers-by and road traffic across the city. China’s most valuable artificial intelligence company now plans to go public in Hong Kong. But the latest regulatory crackdown by China’s authorities also puts SenseTime at risk, analyze Joern Petring and Gregor Koppenburg.
As we announced recently, the investigation into the origin of the Covid pandemic will continue to keep us busy. The World Health Organization has now set up an advisory group to reveal its origin after all. It could be the last chance, as time is running out, according to a WHO epidemiologist. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has looked into the details of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO.
In today’s issue, our columnist Johnny Erling turns his attention to the subject of regret and apology. On its path to becoming a world power, the Chinese leadership neither tolerates self-doubt nor admits mistakes. Critical citizens are censored or locked away. Dissent from abroad is met with wolf-warrior diplomacy. Yet the People’s Republic experienced a brief phase of tolerance after the Cultural Revolution. But this came to an end in 2017 at the latest, as Johnny Erling reports.
Have a great weekend!
The origin of the new Coronavirus has plagued the world for so long remains a mystery. It will probably never be fully explained when and where exactly it jumped to humans. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) is not going to let the matter rest and has created a committee to gather and evaluate scientific findings. The name of the committee: Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO for short. The SAGO has three tasks:
The list of potential members for the research group brings together the world’s most renowned experts in the field of virology. German virologist Christian Drosten from the Charité is ranked sixth on the list, which is sorted alphabetically by last name. At the bottom is Yang Yungui from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). But who will eventually actually accept and join the project is still open. But the clock is ticking: “It may be our last chance to understand the origins of this virus,” says WHO epidemiologist Michael Ryan. The SAGO is to continue its work after the end of its current project and is to advise the WHO in the future.
The public’s focus is, of course, immediately on China; after all, COVID-19 first appeared here. The “laboratory theory” is only one of several competing theories. According to it, the virus came from the central laboratory for virology in Wuhan and was released by accident. The laboratory theory implies mistakes in China’s handling of infectious disease and blames it for the global infection.
Officially, the WHO mission is about clarifying the transition of the virus from animal to human. For future disease prevention, the mechanisms and circumstances that caused this transmission are of particular importance. The SARS CoV-2 virus most certainly has its origins in mammalian species in Asia such as bats, pangolins, or tanuki. Their relation to humans is close enough to allow transmission.
Researchers are also looking beyond China. New findings just came in from Laos, for example. Researchers have found viruses that have strikingly similar properties to Sars-CoV-2 in bats in Laos’s north. Bats are considered to be the origin of the virus. Drosten assumes the virus jumped over to workers in fur farms in China via tanuki. He is not convinced that something went terribly wrong at the Wuhan lab. Other scientists also consider the lab hypothesis to be less likely than transmission in other areas of life.
One at least somewhat plausible mixed theory implies a covered-up laboratory accident. Researchers at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan have been studying viruses that they have already found in the wild. Through negligence, an employee could have carried the virus into the outside world. Depending on the variant of the theory, these viruses have already largely adapted to humans in nature; perhaps they were already circulating among humans elsewhere. Or they may have only taken this step in the laboratory.
The extreme version that accuses researchers of deliberately creating a new virus dangerous for humans through genetic engineering is deemed extremely unlikely. The fact that the institute is located in the vicinity of the first outbreak is also of little informative value. For good reason, the facility is located in an area populated by many bats and where many new viruses appear. So the physical proximity probably does not show causality but has a common cause with the appearance of new viruses.
The question of whether the transmission occurred in nature, on a fur farm, or in the laboratory could be easier answered if ample virus samples had been taken in relevant areas and were stored in time. But China is fuelling global suspicion by refusing independent observers any real access ever since the pandemic broke out. A tour of the former wildlife market in the city of Wuhan does not replace a thorough, detailed local detective.
So China is once again presenting itself to be highly secretive. Whether it is on principle, out of spite, or a sense of guilt – no one can be sure. Results of the first WHO study in February, therefore, remained inconclusive. The only clear thing is that the virus has most likely been passed on to humans through natural adaptation.
What makes the situation even more complicated for SAGO scientists is the fact that the question about the origin of COVID-19 has long had a political dimension. Former US President Donald Trump has already pointed to China as the culprit for the global catastrophe. His successor Joe Biden also fancies the idea. It just offers considerable domestic political advantages. All this, mind you, has nothing to do with whether mistakes by Chinese authorities are at the catalyst of the chain of events.
China has already raised its opinion on the WHO advisory group. A government spokesman welcomed the founding of the SAGO. But he calls for “an objective, scientific and responsible attitude” – suggesting that China had been missing such an attitude in previous investigations on the origin of the virus. With Christian Drosten on board, at least German podcast listeners would now be well-informed about the thoughts and findings of the science group.
The photo of Willy Brandt’s genuflection, taken on 7 December 1970 at the memorial dedicated to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, moved not only Europe. The Chancellor’s plea for forgiveness also touched the Chinese people at the time. Last December, on the 50th anniversary of Brandt’s gesture of humility, many Chinese still remembered it online. Comments demanded that Japan should also acknowledge its war crimes as distinctly as Germany once did.
However, no blogger wanted to question if any Chinese leader had ever apologized for or regretted his country’s mistakes. Only Ding Zilin, founder of the survivors’ association “Mothers of Tiananmen”, dared to publicly ask when the Beijing leadership would repent for the massacre committed on June 4th, 1989. Her parents’ initiative campaigned in vain, year after year, for the rehabilitation of their children killed that night – including Ding’s 17-year-old son. Without warning, soldiers had fired on protestors and students. The mothers’ calls to bring those to justice who were responsible for issuing the order went unheard, as did their appeal to today’s leadership to acknowledge the Tiananmen tragedy.
Beijing has no intention of doing so. On the contrary: It wants to force the whole world to forget the 1989 massacre. And Hong Kong is obliging. Pressured by the new security law, the “Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China”, which has organized the annual Tiananmen vigils for decades, was forced to disband. This week, the “Pillar of Shame” that has stood at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) since 1997 was to be dismantled. The Danish artist Jens Galschiøt had created the eight-meter-tall sculpture – intended as a permanent memorial to the victims of 1989.
Hong Kong needs to follow the example of the People’s Republic, where the mere mention of Tiananmen 1989 is taboo. Beijing’s censors even go one step further back home. They are reinterpreting Mao’s Cultural Revolution and other murderous campaigns of persecution as mistakes committed “with good intentions.” China, therefore, does not need to regret them. The textbooks have just been rewritten accordingly.
Since the Communist Party proclaimed the “dawn of a new socialist era” under the guiding principles of party leader Xi Jinping at its grand party congress in 2017, an old tradition has been reintroduced. It has always been a peculiarity of the Chinese national character neither to admit mistakes nor publicly regret them to save face.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, the first generation of politicians had attempted to break up such old ways of thinking through political-cultural reforms, since they stood in the way of China’s modernization. In 1985, for example, the reformist party leader Hu Yaobang promoted the spectacular publication of a negative psychogram of the Chinese national character, written by the Taiwan-based historian and cultural critic Bo Yang (柏杨), whose book “The Ugly Chinaman” (丑陋的中国人) shook Chinese self-confidence.
Bo Yang wrote – with satirical exaggeration – that the Chinese are culturally and characteristically incapable of admitting their mistakes, let alone regretting them. He attributes this, among other things, to a deep-seated inferiority complex and the constant fear of losing face. The book, which became a bestseller despite ideological censorship, triggered a Bo Yang hype in China
Even the nationalist Global Times once praised him: with a wink, it wrote that the book “The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture” should, if possible, not be recommended to foreigners, lest they see “what we Chinese are really like. Since its publication in 1985, the book has sparked debate about the dark side in Chinese life.”
And in 2013 the Global Times wrote: “Chinese are not good at accepting criticism. In his book, Taiwanese author Bo Yang pointed out that the ‘sickness’ of the Chinese is their fear of losing face and their refusal to admit their wrongs. On hearing any criticism, their first reaction is not introspection but to strike back fiercely.”
China’s public accepted such criticism. Today, after only a few years, that is no longer imaginable. Beijing sees itself threatened, attacked, and slandered by foreign countries and brutally persecutes all dissent from within.
The phase of tolerance was short-lived, but it allowed former Red Guards to start to come to terms with their past in earnest. They confessed to crimes they committed during the Cultural Revolution, acknowledged guilt and responsibility. Another incredible collection of essays was published in 2014. Under the title “We Repent” (我们忏悔), misguided former Red Guards spoke out, as did well-known intellectuals with critical analyses. They repeatedly used the term “daoqian” (道歉), the strongest Chinese expression for deep remorse.
Such attempts to come to terms with the past do not fit the agenda of today’s Chinese leadership, which, on its path to becoming a world power, won’t tolerate self-doubt or the admission of mistakes. Instead of objective historiography, patriotic propaganda is on its agenda.
Beijing just made an example of former investigative reporter Luo Changping (罗昌平). Last week, the 40-year-old was detained after posting a microblog about the patriotic war film “The Battle of Lake Changjin” set during the Korean War (1950-1953). The new blockbuster action film, which has broken all box office records, is a heroic saga in the battle of China against the USA.
Luo’s crime was to mockingly comment on one of the key scenes. Chinese soldiers freeze to “ice sculptures” in company strength in extreme sub-zero temperatures. In a play on words, Luo calls them sand figures (in the sense of fools) who blindly follow the “wise orders” of their commanders. In any case, there are few Chinese today who still openly doubt whether the war was once justified.
Luo allegedly had insulted heroes, state television denounced him by name. In furious anger, Global Times accused him of “spiritual treason” against the values of the Chinese nation, having “blasphemously” reviled the sacrifice of soldiers, and “insulted the People’s Republic.” Luo could now be sentenced to up to three years in prison under the new Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law passed in February.
“Why can’t we Chinese admit mistakes?” (我们为什么不认错) asked Chinese professor Yi Zhongtian (易中天) in a 2012 literary essay. He looked for answers in the feudal imperial order, classical culture, and the connection with the loss of face. The Cultural Revolution played a crucial role because it forced people at mammoth sessions to “deeply criticize their own selves and revisionism” (斗私批修). The incessant morally motivated, absurd self-incrimination and self-mortification “were the only time when Chinese could criticize themselves and admit to anything without really losing face.”
But the fear of admitting mistakes still weighs heavy on many people, Yi warns. Not coming to terms with them and overcoming them could lead to another Cultural Revolution.
Three Chinese taikonauts want to set a record for the Chinese space program: for six months Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and Wang Yaping want to live in the core module “Tianhe”. The “Shenzhou 13” spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the Jiuquan spaceport at the edge of the Gobi Desert at 00:23 local time Saturday night (6:23 PM Friday) on a “Long March 2F” rocket, Xinhua reported. Wang Yaping, a female taikonaut, is also on board for the first time since 2013. The three-member crew will test the systems of the core module, work outside the spacecraft and conduct scientific experiments during their long-term flight.
According to estimates, more than 600 million surveillance cameras are keeping an eye on China’s public. One company that particularly benefits from this is SenseTime. The tech company supplies the police with image recognition and analysis software, enabling authorities to digitally track passers-by and road traffic across the city. China’s most valuable artificial intelligence company now plans to go public in Hong Kong. But the latest regulatory crackdown by China’s authorities also puts SenseTime at risk, analyze Joern Petring and Gregor Koppenburg.
As we announced recently, the investigation into the origin of the Covid pandemic will continue to keep us busy. The World Health Organization has now set up an advisory group to reveal its origin after all. It could be the last chance, as time is running out, according to a WHO epidemiologist. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has looked into the details of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO.
In today’s issue, our columnist Johnny Erling turns his attention to the subject of regret and apology. On its path to becoming a world power, the Chinese leadership neither tolerates self-doubt nor admits mistakes. Critical citizens are censored or locked away. Dissent from abroad is met with wolf-warrior diplomacy. Yet the People’s Republic experienced a brief phase of tolerance after the Cultural Revolution. But this came to an end in 2017 at the latest, as Johnny Erling reports.
Have a great weekend!
The origin of the new Coronavirus has plagued the world for so long remains a mystery. It will probably never be fully explained when and where exactly it jumped to humans. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) is not going to let the matter rest and has created a committee to gather and evaluate scientific findings. The name of the committee: Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO for short. The SAGO has three tasks:
The list of potential members for the research group brings together the world’s most renowned experts in the field of virology. German virologist Christian Drosten from the Charité is ranked sixth on the list, which is sorted alphabetically by last name. At the bottom is Yang Yungui from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). But who will eventually actually accept and join the project is still open. But the clock is ticking: “It may be our last chance to understand the origins of this virus,” says WHO epidemiologist Michael Ryan. The SAGO is to continue its work after the end of its current project and is to advise the WHO in the future.
The public’s focus is, of course, immediately on China; after all, COVID-19 first appeared here. The “laboratory theory” is only one of several competing theories. According to it, the virus came from the central laboratory for virology in Wuhan and was released by accident. The laboratory theory implies mistakes in China’s handling of infectious disease and blames it for the global infection.
Officially, the WHO mission is about clarifying the transition of the virus from animal to human. For future disease prevention, the mechanisms and circumstances that caused this transmission are of particular importance. The SARS CoV-2 virus most certainly has its origins in mammalian species in Asia such as bats, pangolins, or tanuki. Their relation to humans is close enough to allow transmission.
Researchers are also looking beyond China. New findings just came in from Laos, for example. Researchers have found viruses that have strikingly similar properties to Sars-CoV-2 in bats in Laos’s north. Bats are considered to be the origin of the virus. Drosten assumes the virus jumped over to workers in fur farms in China via tanuki. He is not convinced that something went terribly wrong at the Wuhan lab. Other scientists also consider the lab hypothesis to be less likely than transmission in other areas of life.
One at least somewhat plausible mixed theory implies a covered-up laboratory accident. Researchers at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan have been studying viruses that they have already found in the wild. Through negligence, an employee could have carried the virus into the outside world. Depending on the variant of the theory, these viruses have already largely adapted to humans in nature; perhaps they were already circulating among humans elsewhere. Or they may have only taken this step in the laboratory.
The extreme version that accuses researchers of deliberately creating a new virus dangerous for humans through genetic engineering is deemed extremely unlikely. The fact that the institute is located in the vicinity of the first outbreak is also of little informative value. For good reason, the facility is located in an area populated by many bats and where many new viruses appear. So the physical proximity probably does not show causality but has a common cause with the appearance of new viruses.
The question of whether the transmission occurred in nature, on a fur farm, or in the laboratory could be easier answered if ample virus samples had been taken in relevant areas and were stored in time. But China is fuelling global suspicion by refusing independent observers any real access ever since the pandemic broke out. A tour of the former wildlife market in the city of Wuhan does not replace a thorough, detailed local detective.
So China is once again presenting itself to be highly secretive. Whether it is on principle, out of spite, or a sense of guilt – no one can be sure. Results of the first WHO study in February, therefore, remained inconclusive. The only clear thing is that the virus has most likely been passed on to humans through natural adaptation.
What makes the situation even more complicated for SAGO scientists is the fact that the question about the origin of COVID-19 has long had a political dimension. Former US President Donald Trump has already pointed to China as the culprit for the global catastrophe. His successor Joe Biden also fancies the idea. It just offers considerable domestic political advantages. All this, mind you, has nothing to do with whether mistakes by Chinese authorities are at the catalyst of the chain of events.
China has already raised its opinion on the WHO advisory group. A government spokesman welcomed the founding of the SAGO. But he calls for “an objective, scientific and responsible attitude” – suggesting that China had been missing such an attitude in previous investigations on the origin of the virus. With Christian Drosten on board, at least German podcast listeners would now be well-informed about the thoughts and findings of the science group.
The photo of Willy Brandt’s genuflection, taken on 7 December 1970 at the memorial dedicated to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, moved not only Europe. The Chancellor’s plea for forgiveness also touched the Chinese people at the time. Last December, on the 50th anniversary of Brandt’s gesture of humility, many Chinese still remembered it online. Comments demanded that Japan should also acknowledge its war crimes as distinctly as Germany once did.
However, no blogger wanted to question if any Chinese leader had ever apologized for or regretted his country’s mistakes. Only Ding Zilin, founder of the survivors’ association “Mothers of Tiananmen”, dared to publicly ask when the Beijing leadership would repent for the massacre committed on June 4th, 1989. Her parents’ initiative campaigned in vain, year after year, for the rehabilitation of their children killed that night – including Ding’s 17-year-old son. Without warning, soldiers had fired on protestors and students. The mothers’ calls to bring those to justice who were responsible for issuing the order went unheard, as did their appeal to today’s leadership to acknowledge the Tiananmen tragedy.
Beijing has no intention of doing so. On the contrary: It wants to force the whole world to forget the 1989 massacre. And Hong Kong is obliging. Pressured by the new security law, the “Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China”, which has organized the annual Tiananmen vigils for decades, was forced to disband. This week, the “Pillar of Shame” that has stood at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) since 1997 was to be dismantled. The Danish artist Jens Galschiøt had created the eight-meter-tall sculpture – intended as a permanent memorial to the victims of 1989.
Hong Kong needs to follow the example of the People’s Republic, where the mere mention of Tiananmen 1989 is taboo. Beijing’s censors even go one step further back home. They are reinterpreting Mao’s Cultural Revolution and other murderous campaigns of persecution as mistakes committed “with good intentions.” China, therefore, does not need to regret them. The textbooks have just been rewritten accordingly.
Since the Communist Party proclaimed the “dawn of a new socialist era” under the guiding principles of party leader Xi Jinping at its grand party congress in 2017, an old tradition has been reintroduced. It has always been a peculiarity of the Chinese national character neither to admit mistakes nor publicly regret them to save face.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, the first generation of politicians had attempted to break up such old ways of thinking through political-cultural reforms, since they stood in the way of China’s modernization. In 1985, for example, the reformist party leader Hu Yaobang promoted the spectacular publication of a negative psychogram of the Chinese national character, written by the Taiwan-based historian and cultural critic Bo Yang (柏杨), whose book “The Ugly Chinaman” (丑陋的中国人) shook Chinese self-confidence.
Bo Yang wrote – with satirical exaggeration – that the Chinese are culturally and characteristically incapable of admitting their mistakes, let alone regretting them. He attributes this, among other things, to a deep-seated inferiority complex and the constant fear of losing face. The book, which became a bestseller despite ideological censorship, triggered a Bo Yang hype in China
Even the nationalist Global Times once praised him: with a wink, it wrote that the book “The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture” should, if possible, not be recommended to foreigners, lest they see “what we Chinese are really like. Since its publication in 1985, the book has sparked debate about the dark side in Chinese life.”
And in 2013 the Global Times wrote: “Chinese are not good at accepting criticism. In his book, Taiwanese author Bo Yang pointed out that the ‘sickness’ of the Chinese is their fear of losing face and their refusal to admit their wrongs. On hearing any criticism, their first reaction is not introspection but to strike back fiercely.”
China’s public accepted such criticism. Today, after only a few years, that is no longer imaginable. Beijing sees itself threatened, attacked, and slandered by foreign countries and brutally persecutes all dissent from within.
The phase of tolerance was short-lived, but it allowed former Red Guards to start to come to terms with their past in earnest. They confessed to crimes they committed during the Cultural Revolution, acknowledged guilt and responsibility. Another incredible collection of essays was published in 2014. Under the title “We Repent” (我们忏悔), misguided former Red Guards spoke out, as did well-known intellectuals with critical analyses. They repeatedly used the term “daoqian” (道歉), the strongest Chinese expression for deep remorse.
Such attempts to come to terms with the past do not fit the agenda of today’s Chinese leadership, which, on its path to becoming a world power, won’t tolerate self-doubt or the admission of mistakes. Instead of objective historiography, patriotic propaganda is on its agenda.
Beijing just made an example of former investigative reporter Luo Changping (罗昌平). Last week, the 40-year-old was detained after posting a microblog about the patriotic war film “The Battle of Lake Changjin” set during the Korean War (1950-1953). The new blockbuster action film, which has broken all box office records, is a heroic saga in the battle of China against the USA.
Luo’s crime was to mockingly comment on one of the key scenes. Chinese soldiers freeze to “ice sculptures” in company strength in extreme sub-zero temperatures. In a play on words, Luo calls them sand figures (in the sense of fools) who blindly follow the “wise orders” of their commanders. In any case, there are few Chinese today who still openly doubt whether the war was once justified.
Luo allegedly had insulted heroes, state television denounced him by name. In furious anger, Global Times accused him of “spiritual treason” against the values of the Chinese nation, having “blasphemously” reviled the sacrifice of soldiers, and “insulted the People’s Republic.” Luo could now be sentenced to up to three years in prison under the new Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law passed in February.
“Why can’t we Chinese admit mistakes?” (我们为什么不认错) asked Chinese professor Yi Zhongtian (易中天) in a 2012 literary essay. He looked for answers in the feudal imperial order, classical culture, and the connection with the loss of face. The Cultural Revolution played a crucial role because it forced people at mammoth sessions to “deeply criticize their own selves and revisionism” (斗私批修). The incessant morally motivated, absurd self-incrimination and self-mortification “were the only time when Chinese could criticize themselves and admit to anything without really losing face.”
But the fear of admitting mistakes still weighs heavy on many people, Yi warns. Not coming to terms with them and overcoming them could lead to another Cultural Revolution.
Three Chinese taikonauts want to set a record for the Chinese space program: for six months Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and Wang Yaping want to live in the core module “Tianhe”. The “Shenzhou 13” spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the Jiuquan spaceport at the edge of the Gobi Desert at 00:23 local time Saturday night (6:23 PM Friday) on a “Long March 2F” rocket, Xinhua reported. Wang Yaping, a female taikonaut, is also on board for the first time since 2013. The three-member crew will test the systems of the core module, work outside the spacecraft and conduct scientific experiments during their long-term flight.