China’s southwestern province of Guizhou suddenly experienced more than 200 mountain fires that have burned through almost half of the province, but both official channels and Chinese state media have remained silent for weeks, pretending that nothing has happened.
Possible Reasons for Media Silence
China experts shared their views at NTD TV’s Pinnacle View program on what might have caused the wildfires and why the state media remained silent about such a huge natural disaster.According to Tang Jingyuan, a veteran current affairs commentator, there are probably three reasons why the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official media did not report the Guizhou fires.
The first is definitely related to the Chinese New Year. The CCP has a tradition of not allowing the publication of any negative news during festivals in order to create a so-called peaceful atmosphere. It is even more so since CCP head Xi Jinping came to power.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out in Wuhan, it was precisely because Mr. Xi particularly valued the harmonious atmosphere during the Chinese New Year period and did not want it to be ruined. So, authorities in Wuhan were ordered to conceal the situation of the virus both domestically and internationally. As a result, this led to an explosive outbreak of the virus, turning it into a global pandemic.
The second factor is that Mr. Xi is facing a very difficult economy. Before the Chinese New Year, the stock market experienced an avalanche—a big crash. He then had state-owned financial institutions step in and buy stocks to stabilize the market and even issued an executive order to restrict stock selling.
“It was only through this kind of hooligan-like practice that the stock market barely recovered a little bit before the Chinese New Year, just for the sake of avoiding an embarrassing scene during this important festival,” Mr. Tang said.
Under these circumstances, a major natural disaster suddenly broke out in Guizhou. For the CCP, it is completely unacceptable for the news of forest and mountain fires to be announced to the public, Mr. Tang said.
The third factor is that small fires occur around the New Year almost every year because that is the time when Chinese people burn paper money for deceased ancestors, so the local government may not have paid too much attention at first.
However, the mountain fires occurred in multiple locations, and some were particularly large and soon became particularly fierce. When the scattered fires connected and developed into large fires, the local officials did not dare to report it. So they blocked the news.
Massive Infrastructure Projects Damaged the Ecosystem
Mr. Tang also pointed out that Guizhou is a mountainous area and when Wen Jiabao was China’s premier, Guizhou began to extensively build infrastructure to stimulate the economy, including a lot of large-scale water conservancy projects.“A likely result is soil erosion,” he said on the show. “According to the official report of Guizhou itself, there was only one rain in three seasons from the summer of 2022 to the winter, which lasted into 2023. The media called it the ‘hundred-year drought,’ and it was certainly a very serious drought.”
According to Mr. Tang, the large-scale infrastructure construction in Guizhou brought damage to the soil and water, especially in mountainous areas. When the soil cannot maintain the moisture and becomes dry, it naturally becomes at high risk of fire.
Guo Jun, president of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times, added that several provinces in southwestern China have typical Karst landscapes, that is, limestone landscapes with underground caves. The underground water circulation system in Karst areas is very fragile, and the construction of many man-made projects in Guizhou may have caused the water table to fall rapidly, resulting in less water in the soil and air, and more arid land.
According to Ms. Guo, in the past, southwestern and southern China were the places with the most rainfall in China, but starting around 2008, China’s climate has changed dramatically, mainly due to a northward shift of the rainfall belt and a drought in the southwestern part of the country, which is getting more and more serious.
She also noted that the increasing rainfall in the north has brought about several problems, such as the recent flooding we have seen in Henan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, and even Inner Mongolia, with the 2023 flooding in Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province, being the most severe, which was rarely seen in the past.
An ‘End of Dynasty’ Phenomenon
Shi Shan, a senior writer and contributor to The Epoch Times, shared in the show that in an authoritarian system, its power structure has the characteristic that when something goes wrong at the grassroots level, local officials will first try to cover it up, and when it is too late to cover it up, they will use the resources of the whole country to desperately suppress the flow of information. By the time the problem has to be reported to the central authorities, it has already become unmanageable and uncontrollable.“In fact, we have observed that similar things happened repeatedly at the end of a dynasty, especially civil unrest, or disasters. For example, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shaanxi and Henan Provinces experienced drought, the local officials also tried to cover it up at the beginning. Eventually, they had no way but to report to Beijing, but by then, it was already too late to transport the food from other regions for disaster relief,” Mr. Shi said.
He believes that the current situation in China is very similar.
“Although the Guizhou fires may not be able to burn down the CCP regime, but there is indeed a sign—the cover-up and suppression model—that is reminiscent of the end of a dynasty. This model will certainly cause a lot of such problems,” Mr. Shi said.
