The Communist Party of China celebrated its 100th anniversary on July 1st. In a recent conversation with Foreign Correspondent Club (FCC), Eric Xun Li, investor and Founder of Guancha, talked about the past, present and future of the Communist Party of China, and took questions from netizens.
When debating on whether China was being transparent about the information on the outbreak of coronavirus, FCC President Keith Richburg argued that China didn't give people unfettered access to find out what happened in the end of 2019.
Eric Li pointed out that China had its first known case of coronavirus at the end of December 2019, and had the Wuhan lockdown on Jan 23, merely three weeks later. He said that in a case of a virus that's completely unknown to mankind to a complete lockdown of a major city in China, that was also unprecedented in human history.
"In three weeks we showed the world how serious this virus was. Six months later in America and Europe you were still debating whether you ought to wear masks." Said Eric Li.
"Political leaders in America were insulting American people for wearing masks. What I'm saying is you got to cut people some slack. You can't be too arrogant."
"From the first known case of coronavirus of a virus that was completely unknown to the world, ever in history, it took us three weeks to shut down an entire city of 10 million people. There were supposed to be something enough to show the world how serious it was."
Eric Li mentioned that the genome sequence of the coronavirus was shared with the world in the first two weeks of January 2020. It took China around two weeks. "I mean we weren't geniuses here. It took us some time to figure out whether it was serious to begin with. We showed the world in action, how serious it was. We locked down Wuhan, Hubei Province. Nobody's ever done in human history well."
Talking about transparency, Eric Li pointed out that China is the only country that did allow WHO to come in and investigate. No other country has done that, even there are countries that have 100 times more deaths, thousand times more infections.
Eric Li concluded by saying there's a degree of openness in every country. And in comparison, although it has its own problems, China hasn't done so badly.
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