Webcast: The Coronavirus — Insights From the Ground
In Conversation With Anna Fifield of The Washington Post
Anna Fifield, Beijing Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, has been reporting from Beijing since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Hear more about her experience living and working under restricted rules and measures, China’s handling of the crisis and the impact it may have on its people, the economy and the reputation of the Communist Party.
Our key takeaways
Residents of Hubei province and its capital Wuhan are starting to distrust government authorities. Frustration is growing as most people are not allowed to leave their houses. Fifield relies on inputs from residents via social media and other channels to report on the daily lives of doctors, families and ordinary people on site. Once there, correspondents are not allowed to leave the province again. For newspapers, especially smaller outlets, this makes it hard to report from within Hubei province.
The coronavirus outbreak is the biggest domestic crisis since the Tiananmen Square incident. The coronavirus crisis impacts economic growth, possibly more than the trade war with the U.S. The Chinese government has been put under a lot of pressure to act. The response to coronavirus in the beginning was slow. Once the problem became apparent, there was also no immediate plan at hand to deal with such a health emergency.
The Chinese government sees its authoritarian rule confirmed rather than threatened. In the view of Fifield, the central government is in control of the situation. Targeted propaganda and censorship keep the population at ease. The government may even see confirmation in their control mechanisms and surveillance to help monitor public health issues, such as the crisis around the coronavirus.
Anna Fifield is the Beijing Bureau Chief for The Washington Post and Asia Society Asia 21 Young Leader. She is author of The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. Between 2014 and 2018 she was the Post's Bureau Chief in Tokyo covering Japan and the two Koreas. She particularly focused on North Korea, trying to shed light on the lives of ordinary people there and also on how the regime managed to stay in power.