Note: Presented here is the second and concluding installment of “The Whistleblowers of Wuhan;” my summary of the efforts of the bold Chinese dissidents, doctors and citizen journalists who risked everything to get the true information about the pneumonia-like illness spreading in China out to the world during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The information in these articles is largely drawn from the research of Australian investigative journalist, Sharri Markson,[1] as presented in her recently released book, “What Really Happened in Wuhan.” As the information in this installment builds on the information in Part I, that installment should be read first before tackling Part II. For convenience, I have included the link to Part I below. The Wuhan whistleblowers risked not only their freedom, but their very lives to get the truth about what was happening in China out to the world. It is to them these articles are dedicated…MA

http://fromanativeson.com/2022/01/23/the-whistleblowers-of-wuhan-part-i-by-mark-arnold/

____________________

On January 2^nd, 2020, a month and half after first sharing what he knew of the spreading pneumonia-like illness in Wuhan with Dimon Liu and her husband, Bob Suettinger, Wei Jingsheng[2]again contacted Dimon, telling her he wanted to come to her house for lunch that very afternoon. For Wei to make such a request was unusual. Dimon had made meals for him many times before, but never on such a rush basis. He was clearly concerned about something. A little while later Wei arrived at Dimon and Bob’s, and from the moment he got there all he could speak of was the growing crisis in Wuhan. The illness was spreading, he told his hosts, and rapidly. According to information he had acquired from his contacts in China, the Chinese government was now forwarding the notion that the virus had a zoonotic origin[3], from a seafood wet market in Wuhan. Wei didn’t believe it.  “It’s just not possible,” he said, and then spent the next several minutes explaining why.

The information Wei then relayed to Dimon and Bob was worrisome, but it’s what he said next that was truly shocking. The Chinese Communist Party, Wei said, for decades had been running top-secret, highly classified bio-warfare research programs. “The laboratories in Wuhan are very suspicious,” he said, “I believe those laboratories are controlled by the military and not by civilians. The virus is from the laboratory, either through incompetence, accident, negligence, corruption or intention.”  Wei then went on to tell Dimon and Bob that the wet market origin theory was only plausible if the, “avaricious lab technicians sold the used and infected animals to the wet markets.” He also spoke about a specific Chinese virologist named Shi Zhengli,[4] who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) doing such research. Nicknamed “batwoman”, due to her long time work with bat coronaviruses, Shi Zhengli is one of the top virologists in the world and is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIV.

Not knowing what to think, Dimon asked Wei if there was a possibility that Chinese president and CCP Chairman, Xi Jinping, or one his rivals released the virus intentionally.

“Such a possibility always exists,” Wei explained, “because the power elite would do anything to gain advantages during power struggles. Xi would be the most likely culprit, if the virus release was indeed intentional, because Xi controls the military, and the military controls the research in biological warfare.”

Dimon Liu was well aware that the man she was talking to, Wei Jingsheng, had very credible contacts and sources within China. As noted in Part I of this series, and in Sharry Markson’s book, he was born into one of the founding 500 families of the Chinese Communist Party, the elites of the country. Current CCP Chairman and president of the country, Xi Jinping, was a friend of his family’s in Wei’s youth. Because of this, Dimon knew that Wei knew what he was talking about. But six weeks had gone by since he’d first mentioned the illness in Wuhan. Nothing had been reported in the media about any Chinese illness; no travel restrictions, protocols or precautions had been announced. The information Wei had imparted, if true, was obviously being suppressed, indicating that a massive cover-up must be underway in China. Dimon wondered, could it all be true? She had some doubts, but if what she’d been told was even half true, then it was imperative she get the information to the White House—fast. To that end she began composing a memo to another good friend, a man named Matt Pottinger,[5] who just happened to be President Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Asia.

Meanwhile, as the virus spread in Wuhan conditions there were becoming increasingly chaotic. At the hospital where Dr. Ai Fen[6] worked, the busiest hospital in the city, the situation was tragic. In her book, Sharry Markson describes the scene faced by Dr. Ai: “The death was unrelenting. Hospitals were overwhelmed. The mounds of bodies were so high you couldn’t climb them.” Markson then states that Dr.Ai, “…watched and grieved as her colleagues fell sick, some losing their lives.” As CCP censorship of the situation clamped down harder, any terms relating to Wuhan SARS, Wuhan virus, Wuhan pandemic or Wuhan wet/seafood market were scrubbed from the internet. Exactly when most Chinese doctors on the ground felt sharing all information concerning the virus spread was imperative, the Chinese government was doing the opposite.

As for Dr. Wang Lei,[7] by early January, 2020 he was coming to the realization that this coronavirus was far more serious than the SARS outbreak in Beijing in 2003.[8] Obviously much more infectious than SARS, by the 2^nd week of January it had been spreading in Wuhan, and now other areas in China, for over two months that he knew of, showing no signs of dissipating. The new virus indicated big trouble for the world, and Dr. Wang knew it. Compounding things was the fact that the Chinese doctors charged with helping the people were forbidden by the government from reporting any deaths resulting from the new virus. According to Markson in her book, “Hospital wards that would normally hold a maximum of four people had 12 sick patients squashed inside—all highly contagious, spluttering and struggling to breathe. It was diabolical.” Adding to this, as Markson reports, Dr. Wang recalls that a family member of one of his friends got sick and was treated at Wuhan Central Hospital. The family member stated that in the room he was treated in alone, three people had died. “They didn’t even take the bodies away, just left them lying there for days…” he said.

As it turned out, thinking it would be better if Wei Jingsheng spoke personally to Matt Pottinger, Dimon Liu never did send Pottinger the memo with the information about the Wuhan virus. While she considered it important, she also realized she had no way to vet the information Wei had imparted to her. Today she bluntly admits she thought the situation possibly wasn’t as urgent as Wei portrayed, and that she had time to arrange a meeting between Wei and Pottinger. Thus, already famous for her annual Chinese New Year Parties, and with her 2020 party scheduled to take place in just 3 weeks; instead of a memo, Dimon ensured that both Wei and Pottinger were invited to her party. Once there she would ensure Wei had the opportunity to communicate directly with the Deputy National Security Advisor.

Four days after Dimon Liu’s luncheon with Wei Jingsheng, on January 6^th, 2020, major newspapers around the world at last began to break the news of a new coronavirus spreading in China, though often including false information as to the number of people infected and the number of resulting deaths. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, reported in its article that there had been zero deaths to that point from the virus, while the London Times reported that all those infected had been isolated for treatment. As we know from Chinese doctors like Ai Fen  and Wang Lei, who had personally witnessed the volume of cases and deaths, both statements were false. With the Chinese government and the CCP withholding vital information concerning the new coronavirus, and with international flights to and from China continuing in unmitigated fashion, the world had no way to know or to protect itself. The Covid-19 pandemic clock was ticking.

On January, 25^th, 2020, 140 guests were packed into Dimon Liu’s house in Washington DC for her annual Chinese New Year dinner party. Among them were Wei Jingsheng and, though he was late for the party, President Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Matt Pottinger. Once Pottinger arrived Dimon immediately ushered him to a back room where she knew Wei was hanging out, talking to other guests. She ensured the two connected and then left them, knowing that Wei could now get his message to someone within the Trump administration with enough authority to do something with it. At the party, Wei told Pottinger everything he knew about the virus; when it started and where, his suspicions about the CCP, the PLA[9] and its 50-year old bio-warfare program, the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the real data on deaths and infections. Later Pottinger would tell Dimon that he would “never forget that dinner.” It was, he told her, a crucial turning point in how the White House would investigate and understand the nature of the Covid-19 outbreak.

By mid-January the virus was spreading in other Chinese cities outside of Wuhan; yet by January 20^th the Chinese had officially acknowledged only 198 cases of the illness. On that same date the Chinese government finally publicly announced that the new virus could be transmitted human to human. Local government officials in China were warned by the government of the possibility of an epidemic, but with millions of Chinese preparing for the Chinese New Year, no restrictions were implemented until January 23^rd, when, with cases spiraling out of control, the city of Wuhan was ordered to be locked down by the Chinese government. A few days earlier the first known case outside of China was recorded in Thailand, and on January 20^th the first U.S. case was discovered in the state of Washington; both harbingers of the pandemic to come.

As the coming pandemic was ramping up in China, more Chinese dissidents began to come forward, taking upon themselves the task of informing the world of what was really happening in Wuhan. On the afternoon of January 24^th in Beijing, a 34-year old attorney named Chen Qiushi boarded a train for the 5-hour trip to Wuhan—the last train allowed into the city before the lockdown announced the day before took full effect. By the time he boarded the train, Qiushi, along with many others in China, knew of the illness spreading through Wuhan. He also knew about the Chinese 2003 SARS outbreak and the government obfuscation of the truth in that situation. He sensed the same thing happening with the outbreak in Wuhan, and he was coming to the city to see the situation for himself; to do what he could to make the truth known.

No ordinary attorney, Chen Qiushi had a recent history of resistance to the CCP and Chinese government. In August of 2019 he’d gone to Hong Kong to support and video the pro-democracy protests taking place there, in the process getting severely teargassed and suffering burns to his skin as a result. Since then he’d been under government surveillance, his WeChat account permanently closed, and he’d been banned from leaving the country. More recently, at the end of December, 2019, he lost his job when his contract at the law firm he worked for was not renewed. Despite these efforts to shut him up, Qiushi boarded that train to Wuhan, intending to video and report on what he saw happening there.  In the hours before he arrived in the city, hundreds of thousands of people fled Wuhan, trying to get out before the lockdown. The attorney was one of the very few going the opposite direction.

On arriving on the ground in the city, Qiushi immediately went to work, videoing what he observed and posting the videos to social media sites. He visited the major Wuhan hospitals and saw for himself the huge numbers of patients along with the dead bodies. Well aware of the danger he was putting himself in, both from the virus and the government, he felt he had a duty to the people, which he described in one of his videos: “Why do I come here?”, he asked. “My duty is a reporter for citizens. As a reporter, if you don’t dare to come to the front line at the first moment when there is a catastrophe, how can you be called a real reporter?” He then went on to say, “If, unfortunately, I become infected, I will accept my fate. I’d rather die in the city than flee from Wuhan…The current outbreak is comparable to the SARS outbreak in 2003. In the two outbreaks, it is the cover-up of the truth and the block of the information that leads to both of the outbreaks. We cannot make the same mistakes over and over again. At least we can allow the news and information to be spoken out and spread.”

And so, across the next several days, with the Chinese government now onto and zeroing in on him, Qiushi posted video after video chronicling what he saw and reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers. In one of his last posts he stated, “I have the virus in front of me. Behind me is China’s law enforcement. If I am still alive in this city, I will continue my report.” He then fixed his gaze intently, directly into the camera, and followed with, “Fuck you, I’m not even scared of death. You think I’m scared of you, Chinese Communist Party?”

A few days later, in early February, 2020, Qiushi disappeared, and as of the publication of Sharri Markson’s book in the summer of 2021 his definite whereabouts remained unknown. He finally emerged from wherever he was being detained in September, 2021, appearing in a video posted by a friend, at the same time posting a letter on Twitter in which he gave the cryptic explanation: “Over the past year and eight months, I have experienced a lot of things. Some of it can be talked about, some of it can’t, I believe you understand.”

Epilog

Chen Qiushi’s story is but one of many involving Chinese citizen journalists and human rights activists in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in China, who risked everything to reveal the truth of what was happening to the outside world. Sharri Markson mentions several of them in her book, and the courage of these people is both unbelievable and inspiring. One of these, a Wuhan businessman named Fang Bin, uploaded his first video report of what he observed in Wuhan on January 25^th, 2020. The video showed bodies of Covid victims loaded into buses serving as makeshift hearses. Other videos he posted displayed scenes of patients inside overcrowded hospital wards, and the heartbreak of families mourning loved ones. On February 2^nd, he reported that his computer had been confiscated, and 2 days later that his home was surrounded by police. His last posted video is only seconds long, and in it Bin simply shares a written message: “Let all citizens resist! Power to the people!” the message said. On February 9^th Fang Bin was arrested and has not been seen since.

Another of the Chinese dissidents is civil rights activist and former Beijing University lecturer Xu Zhiyong. In early February, 2020, he published an essay criticizing Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his failure as a leader in managing the crisis, calling him “clueless,” and claiming that he, “didn’t authorize the truth to be released and the outbreak turned into a national disaster.” He also implored Jinping to “Please step down (from office)”. Aware that the Chinese police were onto him, Zhiyong took to hiding out in the home of a friend, where he was ultimately arrested and detained. Markson also gives us the example of a 57-year old professor named Xu Zhangrun, who published an essay entitled “Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear.” In the essay Zhangrun, according to Markson, condemned “Beijing’s censorship of information and suppression of freedom of speech.” Consequently, she says “his WeChat account was suspended and his name wiped from Weibo.” Like Qiushi and Bin, Zhangrun also disappeared, though it was later discovered he was in house detention under 24-hour guard.

And then there’s the case of a 70-year old Chinese real estate tycoon and political commentator, Ren Zhiquiang. Incredibly well-known and popular, Zhiquiang had 37 million followers on Weibo. After publicly criticizing Xi Jinping’s handling of the pandemic he disappeared, re-emerging for a one day trial on charges of corruption, bribery and embezzlement, following which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.  

To the above can be added many more examples; ordinary people doing extraordinary things, defying the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, all in an effort bring the truth to the world about the new virus spreading from Wuhan—truth being actively suppressed by the Chinese government to this very day.

We owe it to them, the courageous Chinese whistle blowers, as well as to ourselves, to persist until we know at last what really happened in Wuhan that unleashed the deadly virus on the world; to hold those responsible accountable, and to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.

---

[1]  Sharri Markson (1984-) is a 37-year old Australian investigative journalist and author. She is investigations editor at The Australian (a newspaper) and host of the Sky News Australia program “Sharri,” which airs on Sunday evenings. She became a journalist at a young age (16) and in Australia is the winner of numerous awards in journalism.

[2] For more information on Dimon Liu, Bob Suettinger and Wei Jingsheng please see Part I of this series.

[3] The term “zoonotic” refers to an illness or disease that spreads from animals to humans.

[4] Shi Zhengli (1964-) is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

[5] Matthew F. Pottinger (1973-) is an American former journalist and U.S. Marine Corps officer who served as the United States Deputy National Security Advisor from September 22, 2019 until January 7, 2021.

[6] Ai Fen (1974-) is a Chinese doctor and director of the emergency department of Central Hospital of Wuhan. In December 2019, she was one of the first doctors to encounter pneumonia patients infected with the then-unknown virus, SARS-CoV-2. For more information on her please see Part I of this series.

[7] As covered in Part I, according to Sharri Markson the doctor mentioned is a real person but Wang Lei is not his real name. To protect the doctor’s life she used a false name in her book, which I am also using here.

[8] The 2002–2004 outbreak of SARS, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, infected over 8,000 people from 29 different countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide. The outbreak was first identified in Foshan, Guangdong, China, in November 2002.

[9] The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the armed wing of the PRC’s founding and ruling political party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)