Fang Fang’s Diary: An Indefensible Mistake

ABSTRACT

The novel coronavirus is the common enemy of all humankind, and the Chinese government and people, as the first victims of the epidemic, have contributed to the global war against it by making available all the information and experience available to them. They have done this without reservation, and without excluding the people of countries that have been and are opposed to China. Western politicians have met the conscientious actions of this magnanimous country with a wave of anti-China claims. Against this background, the diary of the Chinese writer Fang Fang appears as a political tract based on unverified and one-sided materials. As the present article shows through systematic analysis, Fang Fang profoundly distorts the great anti-epidemic struggle in Wuhan, China.

KEYWORDS:

• Political diary
• dispatch
• political virus

Acknowledgements

This article was translated from Chinese by Zixu Liu, Assistant Researcher at the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributor

Pinyue Lu is Senior Professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Distinguished Researcher at the China Institute of Fudan University. His research interests include Marx’s Capital and Marxist philosophy. His major publications include Lively Capital: From Surface Phenomenon to Deep Essence (in Chinese; Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2015) and Deep Generative Theory: The New Philosophical Level of Natural Science (in Chinese; People’s Publishing House, 2011).

Notes

1 Fang Fang’s blog, March 16, 2020. [In Chinese.] Accessed June 15, 2020. http://fangfang.blog.caixin.com/archives/223884.

2 This is from the online version of a WeChat post entitled “How Hard It Is to Continue to Support Fang Fang,” sent by one of her supporters (with a WeChat ID called “Our Lives in the Secular Trivialities”) on April 9, 2020 [In Chinese.] Accessed June 15, 2020. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/HfY4Y-SGDdjIPCbsUyJwtg.

3 The original text is from a written interview that appeared in Caijing, April, 2020, and is quoted from a repost on the PKU BBS site [In Chinese.] Accessed June 15, 2020. https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/post-read.php?bid=251&threadid=17631498.

4 Fang Fang’s blog, April 11, 2020. [In Chinese.] Accessed June 15, 2020. http://fangfang.blog.caixin.com/archives/226151.

5 “Fang Fang’s Diary on the Front Page of the Los Angeles Times.” [In Chinese.] Available at Douban, https://www.douban.com/group/topic/169364110/?type=rec; The Los Angeles Times report on the diary can be accessed at https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-21/china-wuhan-coronavirus-diary-fang-fang.

6 The original text (in Chinese) is from a written interview that appeared in Caijing, April, 2020, quoted from a repost on the PKU BBS site, accessed June 15, 2020. https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/post-read.php?bid=251&threadid=17631498.

7 See, for example, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/g7-coronavirus-statement/index.htmll; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/world/americas/coronavirus-united-nations-guterres.html.

8 See, for example, https://www.businessinsider.com/g7-failed-to-reach-agreement-because-of-wuhan-virus-2020-3.

9 Tang Wan (1128–1156), divorced wife of the famous poet Lu You during the Song Dynasty. The words “Hide, hide, hide” are from the end of a poem she wrote in response to one by her ex-husband.

10 Fang Fang’s blog, March 17, 2020. [In Chinese.] Accessed June 20, 2020. http://fangfang.blog.caixin.com/archives/223884.

11 For the timeline and WHO evaluation of China’s response to the epidemic, see “WHO Timeline—COVID-19” at https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/08-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19; and “Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)” at https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf?sfvrsn=fce87f4e_2.

12 Fang Fang’s blog, February 3, 2020. [In Chinese.] Accessed June 22, 2020. http://fangfang.blog.caixin.com/archives/220746.

13 Fang Fang’s blog, March 11, 2020. [In Chinese.] Accessed June 23, 2020. http://fangfang.blog.caixin.com/archives/223404.

14 Data available at Xinhua Net. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://fms.news.cn/swf/2020_sjxw/2_1_xgyq/index.html?v=0.4651023177653275.

15 Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Conference April 17, accessed June 23, 2020. https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-17.