re: #121 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

it is still an authoritarian state, and authoritarians seize any opportunity to tighten their control, even if it means cracking down on the free flow of information.

I had to sign up to WeChat to communicate with my GF when she was in China last year, as FB and WhatsApp and Skype are all blocked there…

Well, yes, I’m aware of that. I’m more interested in the question of how the authoritarian state uses its arsenal of communist ideology in the crisis. One answer is an op-ed in the Global Times that warns against “provoking the masses” and while the government empathizes with the pain, “it stands with the masses.” Will that be effective in controlling public outrage? When Zhou Enlai died the government was completely unprepared for the outpouring of grief from the “masses,” eventually relaxed things until the “Democracy Wall” experiment got out of control, and then turned ever-more authoritarian. I think Hong Kong protests and now the death of Li Wenliang, the doctor arrested for “rumormongering” who has died of the virus, are huge challenges for the CCP.