Out of mountains of reports about the coronavirus epidemic, we at China Change have taken a keen interest in two areas: the origins of the virus, and the decision-making process. The cover story of China News Weekly (中国新闻周刊), published on February 5, put together a detailed timeline and asked the right questions. Within a day, the article was deleted from the magazine’s own website as well as major Chinese news portals.

Luckily, the report is preserved in various news aggregate sites outside China in both simplified and traditional Chinese (武汉之憾：黄金防控期是如何错过的？). The timeline it presented focuses on the discovery of early coronavirus cases, local government’s responses in the seven weeks from December 1 to January 20, what the local and national Center for Disease Control and Prevention did in that period, and without directly raising the question, how the most critical decisions, especially the decision to downplay the outbreak in the first weeks, were made at the State Council and ultimately by the Communist Party leaders in Zhongnanhai.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know much about the first case of the 2019-nConV. This is a translation of the censored article. We added notes at various points of the text to provide more details and context, and links are embedded for your easy reference.  – The Editors ChinaChange.org

The Regret of Wuhan: How China Missed the Critical Window for Controlling the Coronavirus Outbreak

By Li Xiangyu (李想俣), Li Mingzi (李明子), Peng Danni (彭丹妮), and Du Wei (杜玮), in the February 10 issue of China News Weekly

December 31, 2019 saw an announcement that interrupted the Chinese people’s joyous spirit as they prepared to usher in the new year. Circulating on social media sites was a red-letterhead document bearing the official seal of the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission (武汉市卫健委) and sounding an emergency notice: “Cases of a pneumonia of unknown cause have intermittently surfaced at Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Market.”…

Read the full translated article here on the China Change website