Dear Friend,
Happy New Year! I hope to find you well.
What can we hope for 2021 based on what happened this past year?
Tiananmen 2.0
When whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang was forced to sign a document on January 3, 2020 admitting to spreading rumor regarding 7 SARS infections in his December 30, 2019 social media chat, it signaled the beginning of Beijing's coverup of the Wuhan virus.
Dr. Li famously wrote, "There should be more than one voice in a healthy society." His death brought out Tianamen 2.0 when netizens sounded the call, "We Want Freedom of Speech". The Beijing government was so alarmed by such countrywide expression for freedom that they not only rescinded the reprimand against Dr. Li but made Dr. Li a hero hoping to quell the anger of the people.
In the early days of the virus in Wuhan, courageous independent journalists Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin, Li Zehua and Zhang Zhan went into Wuhan to report on the situation there. They soon disappeared.
While Li Zehua was released, Chen Quishi and Fang Bin continued to be detained.
On December 28, Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble."
Fang Bin, in one of his video had said, "The Cruelty of the virus is far less than the cruelty of tyranny. The source of the virus is tyranny."
In explaining his reason for going to Wuhan, Chen Qiushi said, "I long for a societal system that should I become a victim, the world will respond and the spirit will answer."
The Beijing government not only continued their coverup of the virus, their foreign minister openly accused Italy as well as the United States being the source of the virus. While such accusations are typical of the Beijing government's modus operandi to promote nationalism giving their people an enemy to target, it backfired when other governments, especially Australia, began to call for investigations into the origin of the virus especially on the possibility of the virus having escaped from the high level P4 Lab in Wuhan.