Like Mr Murong’s, it is scathing about the government’s response, including the initial attempts to suppress news of the disease’s spread. Published in 2020, it is a translation of her posts to Chinese social media in that period. Mr Murong’s book follows another by a prominent Chinese writer about Wuhan’s shutdown: “Wuhan Diary” by Fang Fang (whose real name is Wang Fang and whose home town is Wuhan). In the preface he says that recalling his efforts, undertaken while dodging the Chinese police, still gives him a “heart-sinking, bitter taste of terror” even though he is now “out of their reach”. Before its publication-last year in Australia and now elsewhere-he fled abroad. Yet one author, Murong Xuecun (the pen name of Hao Qun), managed in 2020 to interview people about their experiences of Wuhan’s 76-day lockdown at the start of the pandemic and to write a book, “Deadly Quiet City”. Several citizen journalists have suffered the consequences of reporting independently: imprisonment, police intimidation to keep them silent, or simply being “disappeared”. It has taken much bravery to produce them. This enhances the value of the few independent accounts that Chinese people have written of how the pandemic unfolded in their country. Victory will be the only permissible verdict. There will be no open investigation into where the virus came from, or whether better safety precautions-say in a lab or a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan-might have prevented a global disaster. There will be no public inquiry in China into how officials handled the outbreak or the harsh and protracted lockdowns in city after city. The story of how covid emerged late in 2019, and of how the Chinese government responded, is another that will be clouded in Chinese minds by disinformation and lies.
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