1) Why so little focus on China's more than impressive community response to #COVID19 in the English-speaking media? Multiple reasons, but here's a few thoughts as to why this might be the case (THREAD):

2) Orientalist tropes racialize Chinese people as "docile," "politically impotent," "selfish" & driven only by financial greed. This does not exactly corroborate with people having political agency, even during a #coronavirus that threatens their lives and lives of loved ones

3) This fits in neatly with the enormously simplistic Cold War-era idea that China’s political system is “totalitarian,” meaning citizens have no say whatsoever in how their society functions.

4) That’s not to say the Chinese political system isn’t authoritarian. It’s to say authoritarianism is simplified to the point that it becomes a completely useless political category to understand anything even remotely complex, like China’s political system

5) Then there’s this idea of there being no politics in China outside the upper echelons of the Party, who make arbitrary decisions based on the personal whims of “Emperor Xi.” (Or Hu, Jiang, Deng & Mao him). How leadership responds to pressures from below is ignored

6) Considering there are 90 million CCP members (more than population of Germany) & in many ways it’s organic to society right down to the grassroots, this is an extraordinary simplification. But Cold War-era narratives like those

7) All of this is incredibly unfortunate, and it feels like it’s driven more by ideology than a fair appraisal of what’s happening on ground. Being a Party member, as so many people here are, doesn’t mean you parrot everything expressed from the top

8) Hierarchy and discipline are inherent to the CCP, yes, but so too are divergences in how people think, feel & act. It’s called being human. This is the case both at the top of the Party and from top to bottom

9) China may not have a civil society in the liberal democratic sense, but that’s unsurprising because it’s not a liberal democracy. At the same time, nobody residing in China can deny there has been an enormous mobilization through the Party and ACROSS Chinese society.

10) Trying to understand this, and give credit where it’s due by conferring a degree of legitimacy on those involved, feels like a better & more humane response than simply screaming “draconian” & “brainwashed.” END