Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, one of the most senior government officials to visit the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, toured a residential community in Wuhan’s Qingshan district on March 5 when, according to state media, Sun Chunlan inspected the operations of the neighbourhood committee to supply residents each day with necessities like medicine, food and fresh vegetables. Videos posted online showed Sun Chunlan and a delegation walking along the grounds while residents appeared to shout from their apartment windows, “fake, fake,” “it’s all fake,” as well as “we protest”. Some could be heard yelling, “formalism.” Unusually, on March 6, various Chinese state media outlets reported the videos showing public discontent. The People’s Daily posted a video subtitled in English showing one person shouting “fake, fake,” which has since been removed. Other outlets like Beijing Youth Daily reported the incident. A government-affiliated account on WeChat, Taoran Notes, said in an essay posted on March 5, that all the facts of the incident were “basically true”. The State-owned CCTV reported that Vice Premier Sun Chunlan held a meeting immediately after the incident to deal with the complaints and staff were dispatched to visit the residents one by one. Taoran Notes said observers say state media may be trying to co-opt discussion of the videos ,which circulated widely online, and provide their own narrative of events. The incident provides the central government an opportunity to show it responding to public sentiment, after a wave of public anger over the suppression of early warnings of the virus. “It is by not covering up problems that we can resolve them,” the article by Taoran Notes said.
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