China Uses Pandemic Propaganda to Spread Totalitarian Ideologies: HK Columnist

Simon Lee, a former columnist at Apple Daily, at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas on July 15, 2022. (The Epoch Times)

The Chinese regime leveraged its propaganda in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic to spread its totalitarian ideologies to the West, according to former Hong Kong Apple Daily columnist Simon Lee.

“When COVID started, China [was] concerned only on one thing—how can they capitalize on this crisis to show the world that China’s system is superior to the rest of the world,” Lee recently told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

Lee singled out how the regime highlighted its capability to build a quarantine hospital in a week, “then they propagandized the achievement as ’this is the Chinese efficiency.'”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took it a step further by spreading the rhetoric: “We China control the disease from spreading. Your countries, the Western world, should learn from us on how to manage this virus,” according to Lee.

Whenever other countries failed with their lockdown policies, China said, “Look, this is the failure, the weakness of the Western democratic institutions, because you cannot get things done.”

Exporting Totalitarianism

The West had bought the regime’s rhetoric and applied its totalitarian ideologies, Lee opined.

He further pointed to Dr. Anthony Fauci advocating for strict COVID-19 control, saying: “He thought he was defending against the virus, but he is introducing an ideological virus of totalitarianism to his nation.”

“Whether people can develop immunity, whether your health care system can cope with the disease, that is a very objective, scientific issue,” Lee said.

In Lee’s opinion, the CCP is still insisting on a zero-COVID policy because “they want to tell the world that if you have people dying from the disease, it was because your government is incompetent.”

“The world is not only immune to COVID, the world is actually more immune to the crazy idea that you need a strong government to keep people healthy,” he said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Fauci for comments.

The Threat of Freedom

The regime sees freedom as a threat that needs to be subjected to elimination, according to Lee.

“It is in their nature to destroy everything that represents freedom. They wanted to destroy freedom of their own people and of the people of other nations, consciously [and] intentionally,” Lee said.

Lee further explained why the regime treats both Hong Kong and Taiwan as a threat to its existence.

“Firstly, Hong Kong provided an alternative for Chinese people. Hong Kong shows that Chinese can live in a free society and prosper,” Lee said.

“When Chinese in an authoritarian regime can not prosper, then everyone will ask the question, ‘Why can’t we be more like Hong Kong?’ he added.

According to Lee, the same logic is applied in relation to Taiwan.

In Lee’s opinion, Taiwan shows that Chinese people can have an open, functioning, democratic society and have a civil society that advocates for the people.

“When things are not going right in China, like now with the implosion of the economic real estate bubble ... people will ask, ‘Why can’t we be more like Taiwanese, having this certain, humble, but free life?’” Lee said.

China “has to eliminate Hong Kong and Taiwan, so that at least they can tell the world that there is only one possibility for Chinese society,” he added.

One Country, Two Systems Firewall

Lee pointed to the constitutional principle of “One country, two system” describing the governance of Hong Kong after the territory was returned to China. It was formulated in the early 1980s during negotiations over Hong Kong between China and the United Kingdom.

The columnist called the principle as “a firewall protecting the one country and the one system that they have.”

“It is a firewall that protects China from changing itself, because most of the time, if you need access to the international financial market, you have to change your rules,” he said.

“China successfully transformed its state-owned sector [and] modernized it without changing the totalitarian culture of the nation. Actually, it becomes even more totalitarian than before,” Lee added.