"No cover-up": Chinese diplomat grilled over coronavirus response on Q&A
Minister of the Chinese Embassy in Australia, Wang Xining has denied China’s involvement in a “cover up” of the extent of the coronavirus and defended brutal tactics being used to control the disease, saying they were possible in Australia too.
China has locked down tens of millions of people and parts of the country as they attempt to control the spread of the disease that has infected 79,000 people and spread to South Korea, Italy and Iran, among other countries.
Appearing on Q&A, Wang was grilled on China’s tendency to withhold information and whether it had mishandled the coronavirus outbreak and there had been a cover-up.
But when speaking about the controversial centres where one million Uighurs are locked up, which critics have described as concentration camps, Wang called them “training centres”.
The comment drew laughter from the crowd as they were taken aback by his words.
Referring to the spread of coronavirus, Wang denied there was a cover up by China.
“I don’t think there is a cover-up,” said Wang. “It is a very sophisticated issue. It involved a lot of agencies and expertise. It takes time to make precise judgements on how to deal with.”
He went on to explain that China sees itself not as a “party state” but actually as a “socialist democracy”.
“A simple comparison between Australian democracy and the Chinese democracy will be like this – you have a ‘voting’ democracy, we have a ‘working’ democracy,” he said.
“Efficiency is our top concern.”
Q&A host Hamish Mcdonald pointed out that democracy involved voting but Wang argued that people did vote for members of the National People’s Congress.
Asked about the system, journalist and researcher Vicky Xu said there were democracies written into China’s constitution but whether they were practically carried out was another issue.
Journalist Stan Grant, who lived in China for 10 years, spoke about his experience working for CNN and said Wang, who is now the deputy head of mission at the Chinese Embassy in Australia, was “in charge of me” at the time.
A really remarkable #qanda tonight - congratulations.
The first step to peace is communication, rather than confrontation. We need more talking, challenging, listening, persuading on #China. Well done.— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) February 24, 2020
On #qanda, Qs I never thought I would hear asked and As I never thought I would hear.
Powerful.— Greg Baum (@GregBaum) February 24, 2020
Grant revealed that when CNN did a story the Chinese did not want people to know about, the screen would go black.
“So information was blocked from people. People that we would interview would often disappear. Would be put under house arrest … we were detained on numerous occasions. Sometimes … violently and physically detained.”
But Wang said “I don’t agree”.
“We think sometimes the Western media failed to give out the information, picked out a piece of a large jigsaw to portray China as a very autocratic country. If you go into the street, talk to the people, you’ll find for example, 85 per cent of people agreed with what the government is doing.
“They think China is moving in the right direction. And there are 90 million Communist Party members. Each year there are two million more joining the party. If you think they are idiots, that’s an insult.”
Wang then said that he did not think freedom of speech was allowed in any country all over the world.
“I don’t think child pornography or pro-terrorist information would be allowed in Australia or anywhere else in the world,” he said.