They were correct in threatening a doctor who reported what he saw (facts) to retract his statements as being _false_?
The local government didn't want to believe in the threat and wanted very much to keep any negative news hushed out of fear of looking bad to the central government.
So there you have it, a country governed by fear where people prefer to hide issues instead of quickly seeking help.
They could have done it through internal channels, without the public knowing but no, they crushed the messengers and tried to hide the facts until it was too late.
The central government admitted it itself: https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1506445-20200203.h...
That's for sure but there's a useful middle ground between mindless panic and total complacency, and these Chinese officials were way too far on the complacency side for quite some time.
They wouldn't threaten and silence numerous doctors that tried to warn everyone.
They wouldn't blockade access to one of the world's largest cities, to prevent outside health inspectors from assessing what was really going on. It wasn't until the first week of February that they were willing to let a major contingent of outside experts in, including from the US. That was two months into the outbreak and a point where things had already gotten very bad.
If this had started in France and the US asked to send experts in to help, France would not deny that request, they wouldn't blockade Paris off from all foreign access to hide what was really happening (how bad it was, and what they were doing to people).
And the tech press mocked "no handshakes" until less than a month ago.
Stupid knows no political party.
Sure our president is really downplaying it, but how do you even fight something that makes some people sick, and not others. There could be 1000s of carriers of COVID-19 who don't even know it.
It's a spectrum of stupid. Moscow Mitch is holding up financial relief because it's a good opportunity to stick it to Planned Parenthood.
"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity,[2] and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."
They did squash discussion of it.
Once the national government found out, they fired the local officials and lauded the doctor as a hero.
I'll admit, though, that I wouldn't trade my right to vote for a cure for the common cold, coronavirus, or anything else.
Look, this is a dangerous meme in more ways than one. Italy and Spain managed to lock down entire cities, and those are countries with a strong tradition of democracy. Emergency powers, martial law etc. are a thing, and there's even quite a bit of precedent for using them to deal w/ disease outbreaks. Even in the US.
In constitutional monarchy the monarch is Head of State, a figurehead role with no real personal power. Because monarchs are born not elected this figurehead has no semblance of democratic legitimacy, it's obvious to everyone that they shouldn't get any power, yet as a symbol they are long-lived and emphasise continuity even as political change happens around them.
Elected Politicians on the other hand actually run the legislature and executive government.
That is, the laws you obey are made by people you elected to make them, but at times of crisis the living symbol of your country isn't some politician roughly half the country doesn't like.
This works so much better than the US system that Americans charged with trying to make new countries or fix broken ones (after "regime change" for example) do not follow the US model for many decades. If you're an optimist, the US model worked once and maybe they got lucky. If you're a pessimist we're just waiting for the cracks to get bad enough that it falls apart.
You can't support that claim. Historically - all of recorded history - there are less than half a dozen examples that can be argued to be comparable to or to have systems that are more stable than the US over two centuries of time.
Go ahead and list all the constitutional + democratic systems that have lasted for more than two centuries. The European region barely had any democracies as recently as WW1. Here is what that looks like:
https://i.imgur.com/fnJNjIn.png
Now go back to 1850 or 1900. How many were there? So where do you plan to get your data from, to support your premise on stability?
There is long-term instability inherent in all functioning monarchy systems: the source of that instability is that people frequently don't like them, which is why nations have spent the last few hundred years gradually abandoning or neutering monarchy systems. Most of what remains is a cultural trinket. It's why the monarchy in the UK is little more than a facade, a figurehead; it has no real governing power or position, it is of relatively little political consequence and probably never will be again. Even including the UK in this, is a questionable data point because of that. What does the Queen do? Answer: not much, she is nothing more than a quaint cultural nod to the past at this point.
In fact the US has the opposite problem. Its system of government tends to produce too much stability and not enough dynamism (which is what the argument for many political parties is arguing in favor of). That stability often means the US moves slower on reforms and its system is highly resistant to change. Those are the trade-offs inherent in having greater stability.
Plenty of countries especially in Latin America copied this choice and it didn't work for them. I think the evidence supports the conclusion that's because it's a bad choice.
The danger was sufficiently known, sufficiently early.
Those sounding the alarm were silenced.
Once the threat was clear, the government of China acted much more alacrity and decisiveness than any Western country, which have had months of advance notice.