The sad decline of new atheism

While I was doomscrolling my way through Twitter one evening last month, the tweet below caught my attention: 

Whenever I see the name Richard Dawkins, I am taken back to the innocent days of the mid-2000s: the times before social media and fake news, financial crises and pandemics, when it seemed impossible that a man even more incoherent and ignorant than George W. Bush could one day sit in the White House; when China still seemed to be set on an inevitable course towards a more democratic and open future; when most Europeans were still excited about the Euro and European integration; and when "woke" was nothing but the past tense of "wake".

One of the intellectual currents of the day was the rise of the "new atheists". The term was coined in 2006 by American journalist Gary Wolf, to describe a new breed of intellectuals who felt that organized religion and irrational beliefs had no justification in the modern world, and that they should be aggressively criticised and countered in the public sphere through rational argument. That same year saw the publication of two of the seminal texts of this intellectual trend, "the God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. Daniel Dennett's more measured "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" also came out in 2006. In 2007, Christopher Hitchens produced a polemic entitled "God is not Great: why Religion Poisons Everything". That same year, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett met up in Washington DC, for a two-hour chat that later earned the four participants the jokey moniker of the "four horsemen of the non-apocalypse". 

For a while, the issue of "atheism vs. religion" became one of the dominant themes of intellectual discourse in the Western, English-speaking world. High-profile debates were organised between the two sides; book after book debated the issue; even the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster became a cultural phenomenon. Richard Dawkins became the improbable star of the atheist movement, as he found himself invited to talk show after talk show on both sides of the Atlantic so he could espouse his materialist, and very English, worldview. Dawkins was also the star of the Global Atheist Convention that was held twice in Melbourne in 2010 and 2012 and, tellingly, never again.

Yes, because some time around the turn of the decade the whole question of atheism started to lose its urgency. This well-argued blog post presents some compelling evidence: Google searches for terms like "atheism", "atheist", "agnostic" and "creationism" started to decline after 2012, in some cases quite dramatically, as did traffic to some of the major atheist websites. It is a tendency that is obvious to anyone who follows such trends. It's not that religion has disappeared, or is close to disappearing, in the Western world; it's more that most believers and atheists have simply gone back to blissfully ignoring the other side's existence.

Why did this happen? One possibility is that the atheists, at some level, won the argument. The US has long been an outlier within the developed world because of the strength of popular religious feeling, with going to church the norm rather than the exception in many areas of the country. But over the last decade there has been a clear shift: the percentage of adults defining themselves as Christian dropped by 12%, to around two thirds, while the percentage of people defining themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" rose by 17%, to around a quarter of the population (with other religions taking up the remainder). According to one study, the shift toward secularism clearly began to take place in 2007, the year after the God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation came out, when Dawkins and his fellow atheists were at the peak of their popularity. It isn't unreasonable to assume that those books, and the debate surrounding them, made being atheist or agnostic much less of a taboo for parts of the population, especially those who called themselves Christian more out of habit than because of any strong conviction.

If this is so then the "new atheist" intellectuals should be credited with a striking victory, something that generally gets lost in discussions about why their cause seems to have lost steam. But can this really be the only factor? Much of the American population is still religious after all, and the evangelicals are still a force to be reckoned with, so it's not like atheists have no one left to argue with. What's more Dawkins and Hitchens both came from Britain, a country where popular religiosity was not as strong as in the US to begin with, and where there has not been such an obvious move away from religion in recent years either.

Perhaps it is necessary to look at the even bigger picture. The world today is certainly a more troubled place than it was 15 years ago, and that's even without the Covid-19 pandemic. Authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia and populist politics have been on a steady rise everywhere for at least a decade, while the financial crisis of 2008 seriously dented the Western middle class's sense of security. Geopolitically, people's focus has shifted somewhat from the Middle East to Russia and China. Religious issues don't really have anything to do with the West's constant state of tension with China, a country ruled by a party that still officially bars its members from following any religious faith at all. Perhaps, in today's world, the truth or non-truth of religious tenets is just too abstract of an issue for people to care about? 

This might be a good argument, if it wasn't for the fact that many of the issues around which our current "culture wars" are centred, for instance the rights of transsexual people, are equally abstract to most of us. The intelligent, if America-centred, blog post to which I already linked above claims that the deciding factor was a shift in the progressive "hamartiology" (doctrine of sin). Over a decade ago, parts of liberal, Democrats-supporting America liked to define themselves as those who followed science and reason, and decided that society's problems were the result of people "blindly following three-thousand year old fairy tales". This was in keeping with the spirit of the times, since the evangelical vote had been instrumental in bringing G.W. Bush to power and things like Intelligent Design, radical Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were all over the news.  

In 2008 Obama gained the presidency, and then in 2014 the Ferguson riots happened, and the focus started to shift towards race. Especially after Trump was elected, progressive America decided to define itself in opposition to racism and sexism. The adversary was no longer those blinded by irrational, magical thinking, but rather those blinded by their own privilege, or unwilling to let go of it. Many atheist bloggers and activists turned into "social justice" bloggers and activists, while others shifted towards the alternative right. All of a sudden, arguing over the existence of god or whether we descend from apes felt very yesteryear.

It is certainly true that arguments over race, gender and sexuality seem to have superseded concerns over religion, not just in the US but all over the Western world. In the current climate it would certainly not pass unnoticed that the four stars of new atheism were all heterosexual white men; in fact, it seems incredible that this was hardly even remarked upon back in 2007. 

What is striking is that two of the main figureheads of the atheist movement, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have now become quite vocal adversaries of the new wave of left-wing identity politics. In the process, they have expressed support for some pretty unpleasant and reactionary causes and ideas. Over the last few years, Dawkins has gotten into all sorts of rows over his views on Islam, feminism and sexual harassment. Nowadays the Oxford biologist seems to spend more time rebutting accusations of racism and sexism than discussing religion or the origins of life. Most recently, the famous debating society of Trinity College Dublin rescinded an invitation for Richard Dawkins to speak because of "concerns" over his views on Islam and sexual assault.

Some of the accusations would seem to be well grounded. Back in 2011, Dawkins wrote an infamous letter entitled "Dear Muslima", in which he attacked atheist and feminist blogger Rebecca Watson for complaining about being propositioned by an unknown man in an elevator at 4 AM during an atheist convention in Dublin. Apparently the fact that Muslim women have much worse stuff to complain about means that Western feminists like Watson are whining about nothing. In the end, all that happened was that "a man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for a coffee". Never mind that the man was another delegate with whom Watson had never spoken, who thought it quite normal to invite her to his hotel room for "a cup of coffee" at 4 AM. Women in Saudi Arabia have it far worse, so what's the problem?

Dawkins later apologized for the letter, but in the meantime he has attracted more controversy with questionable tweets and remarks about how "date rape is bad; stranger rape at knifepoint is worse", how rape victims shouldn't be considered reliable witnesses if they were drinking at the time of the rape, and how the "mild paedophilia" he encountered as a schoolboy in the fifties cannot be judged by today's standards. Some of this could be blamed on the medium of communication: when you spend your days on Twitter, as Dawkins seems to do, you are likely to say a few idiotic things here and there. For a man in his seventies, getting the hang of the minefield that is social media must be tough. I also suspect that the sting of being called a misogynist has caused him to double down on these positions, rather than wisely steer clear of such topics. Still, while Dawkins did at one point claim to be a feminist, he has clearly decided that he has a strong antipathy towards "social justice" politics, "wokeism", "political correctness" or whatever else you decide to call it. 

Sam Harris has veered off into even darker directions. In 2017, Harris hosted the conservative writer Charles Murray on his podcast. Murray is famous (or infamous) for his view that different races display differences in average IQ that can only be explained by genetics, with blacks and Hispanics lower down the intelligence pole than whites and Asians. Murray was denied a platform and shouted down by students in Middlebury College, which convinced Harris that the writer was a victim of "liberal intolerance" and "political correctness gone mad" who deserved a platform. Most feel that during his podcast Harris did very little to challenge Murray and his toxic arguments, and generally seemed sympathetic towards him. Since then, Harris has loudly and repeatedly taken position against Black Lives Matter and "woke culture".

What of the other two champions of new atheism? Christopher Hitchens sadly died an untimely death from cancer in 2011, but one feels that if he were still around he would probably be as strong a critic of left-wing identity politics and "cancel culture" as anyone; as for Daniel Dennett, he was always the odd one out, being more of a scientist than a polemicist, and he usually avoids such topics.

Clockwise, from top right, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett

 

Perhaps it isn't surprising that there would eventually be a messy divorce between atheism and progressive politics. "New atheism" presented itself as a simple call to reject superstition and dogmatic faith in favour of rationality and evidence. But its proponents inevitably went beyond that, commenting on social and political issues in a way that was unsurprisingly affected by their personal origins and biases. Atheism's main public champions came from comfortable middle and upper-class backgrounds in the US and Britain, and they could be rather blind to the social and cultural dynamics which create religious feeling among the disenfranchised. What's more, while they were genuinely scathing of all monotheistic religions, their greatest scorn and condemnation was always reserved for Islam. 

Richard Dawkins was born into a family of the British landed gentry, and went to a renowned Church of England public school before moving on to Oxford University. While he abandoned Anglicanism as a teenager, he has never hidden a certain affection for the faith. He has called himself a "cultural Anglican", and praised the Church of England for its "gentle decency". He has also openly claimed that while Anglicanism may not be good, it's still better than Catholicism, Mormonism and Islam. He seems to have something of a blind spot regarding Anglicanism's own nasty history of discrimination and intolerance against Catholics, and, I suspect, the misdeeds of British imperialism as a whole.

Dawkins believes that organised religion is at the root of much of what is wrong in the world. As he claims in "the God Delusion": "Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpower Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it."

This is, of course, a highly simplistic worldview which dismisses all of the inequality, the historical injustice and the economic and social dynamics that lie at the basis of these problems. Dawkins also ignores the fact that in many parts of the world religious affiliation is basically a marker of your ethnic identity in the same way as your language or your surname, and has little to do with your actual beliefs. Still, one could argue that such simplifications are a necessary part of any sweeping argument about the world, and it is hard to deny that organised religion has been responsible for fanaticising and stultifying its followers, sowing division, promoting oppressive sexual and gender norms, and encouraging rejection of new scientific knowledge, including through the modern aberration of "creationism" that rightly outrages Dawkins. 

What many found troubling, right from the start, was Dawkins' very obvious aversion towards Islam. I happen to think Dawkins has a point when he says that you do not need to be a theologian to criticise religion or understand that religious beliefs are irrational and unproven, any more than you need to be a "fairyologist" to understand that fairies don't exist. For this reason I see no scandal in him condemning Islamic beliefs as irrational, in spite of not having read the Quran by his own admission. What I find more problematic, on the other hand, is when he veers off into geopolitics and blames the problems of the Muslim world entirely on religion, or talks about Muslim countries as if they were all no different from Saudi Arabia. His views on such issues are basically just the "common sense" of the Western establishment, and he has never had anything of particular insight to add to this debate.

Over the years, Dawkins' rhetoric on Islam has become more and more extreme. In 2017 he wrote: "It's tempting to say all religions are bad, and I do say all religions are bad, but it's a worse temptation to say all religions are equally bad because they're not. If you look at the actual impact that different religions have on the world it's quite apparent that at present the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam." In all fairness, he went on to say that he doesn't consider individual Muslims to be evil, and that he opposed Trump's Muslim travel ban. On another occasion he tweeted "(Justifiable) Islamophobia is poles apart from (bigoted) Muslimophobia. Muslims are Islam's main victims." He has repeated the old chestnut that Islam is not a race, so being opposed to Islam cannot possibly make one bigoted.

Sam Harris, the son of a Quaker actor and a Jewish screenwriter brought up by his secular Jewish mother in Los Angeles, also detests Islam. Even more than Dawkins, he has let his hatred of this religion lead him to take up some pretty questionable positions. In "Letter to a Christian Nation", Harris makes the reasonable point that most developed countries, and particularly Western European ones, are far less religious than the US and pretty much anywhere else on earth, and at the same time are among the healthiest, wealthiest, peaceful and most equal societies in the world. He then adds that "insofar as there is a crime problem in Western Europe, it is largely the product of immigration. Seventy percent of the inmates of France's jails, for instance, are Muslims." Perhaps this might be because Muslim immigrants from France's former colonies in North Africa make up the bulk of the country's working poor and unemployed, rather than because being a Muslim or having a religion make one more likely to commit crimes, but such considerations don't enter the dangerously simplistic picture painted here.

Later on, Harris claims in alarm that "the birthrate among European Muslims is three times that of their non-Muslim neighbours. If current trends continue, France will be a majority-Muslim country in twenty-five years - and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow." A quick look at some actual statistics shows that this rhetoric has no basis in fact. In 2016, ten years after the book was published, Muslims in France were still only 8.8% of the population (the highest percentage anywhere in the EU), and projections on the share of Muslims in Europe in 2050 went from a low of 7% to a high of 14%, depending on levels of immigration. 

Finally, and most strikingly, Harris says that "Political correctness and fear of racism have made many Europeans reluctant to oppose the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. With a few exceptions, the only public figures who have had the courage to speak honestly about the threat that Islam now poses to European society seem to be fascists. This does not bode well for the future of civilization." The only thing left is for him to claim that Europe is about to turn into "Eurabia", a favourite term of far-right xenophobes.

I am certainly not blind to the reactionary, misogynist and intolerant aspect of Islam as it is practiced today by Islamic communities, or to the dangers of Islamism as a political project. No one should feel they have to hold back from criticising Islamic tenets because people might find it offensive, or for fear of being called prejudiced. No one should feel forced to repeat platitudes about it being a "religion of peace" either. But when Sam Harris describes Muslim immigrants in Europe as a threatening alien body, bound to take over the continent unless something is done, he really does sound like the worst kind of right-wing extremist. These arguments can only be described as deeply problematic, and yet they raised few eyebrows at the time.

Consider also that this was the time when the US army was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Harris expressed support for the invasion of Afghanistan, which he saw entirely as an issue of fighting Muslim fundamentalists who would understand no other argument. He opposed the war in Iraq, but without much conviction, calling it a "distraction" from the necessary war in Afghanistan. Richard Dawkins held exactly the same positions. Christopher Hitchens went further, strongly supporting the US invasions of both Iraq and of Afghanistan. His extremely strong antipathy towards Islam was certainly part of the reason he became such a fan of "liberal interventionism” in the last decade of his life. The sense of injustice that many people in the non-Western world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, feel over such military interventions was clearly lost on the prophets of atheism.

Dawkins with Ariane Sherine, launching the "atheist bus campaign" in 2008

In essence, new atheism was a product of its time, and it always had a conservative and Western-centric side to it. It has now lost the attention of the public, while some of its most famous faces are busy turning themselves into pariahs in progressive circles. And yet, while the contention that most of the world's problems derive from organised religion was clearly simplistic, the call to view the world through the lenses of rationality and scientific evidence hasn't lost any of its relevance. One need only look at the proliferation of idiotic and scientifically illiterate conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and vaccines, and the widespread distrust of medical science and faith in "alternative" treatments that laid the ground for them. Irrational beliefs continue to exist and thrive in the modern world, whether in the guise of holy books and revelations or of quantum healing and homeopathy.  

Nothing normal under the sun: a few observations on China's new normal.

The word "surreal" may be overused nowadays, but it really is the only way to describe the experience of being back in China for the first time since before the pandemic. In most ways it feels like picking up my life where I left it, in a society where very little seems to have changed, and the fear of the virus is already a distant memory. I am, it must be said, glad to be in a place where you do not need to wash your hands all the time like a hypochondriac, or worry about getting too close to people on the street, or wonder whether your runny nose is just an ordinary cold or if you should go and get tested just to stay on the safe side. 

On the other hand, home has never felt so far away. It may only be an 11-hour flight back to where I'm from, but the pandemic makes Europe and China feel almost as far apart as they did when it took weeks of journey by ship to travel from one to the other. The world was already becoming more divided, but Covid-19 has created fissures that may take decades to heal. 

Now that I've been back in China for five weeks (of which the first two were spent in quarantine), I have a few observations to share on China's post-pandemic "new normal".

1) Daily life in China feels normal

Life in China really does feel like it's back to its pre-Covid "normality". Between the initial lockdown, mass testing, the isolation of Hubei from China and then of China from the world (see below), the virus has been stamped out. Fear of infection has dissipated, and the general public trusts that the pandemic has been effectively controlled. People wear a mask on public transport because they have to, but many no longer wear one, or wear one pulled down, when they walk the streets. Even those who do wear a mask no longer seem to have any real fear of infection; it's more that putting on a face-covering before going out has become almost automatic, and you never know when a place may require it. It's also a way of signalling that you are doing your bit to stop the pandemic. The rather odd fashion of hanging your mask around your sleeve when you aren't wearing it has also taken shape.   

In Chinese cities all workplaces and commercial establishments are open again, with no particular restrictions in place. I have seen signs in public offices and gyms asking people to maintain a one-meter distance to avoid infection, but nobody seems to take them seriously anymore, even in police stations. Quite simply, getting infected is no longer a matter of concern.

Travelling within Mainland China is also not a problem anymore, except if you happen to pass through a place exactly when one of the occasional new outbreaks occur. This is unlikely, but if it does happen you run a risk of being caught up in a new lockdown, or having restrictions placed on you when you go back home. The authorities will pull no stops to make sure that any new outbreaks of Covid-19 remain contained. I know a Beijinger who visited Qingdao (where an outbreak was put down a few weeks ago) during the national holidays. After returning to Beijing, she was required to take a PCR test by the government. 

Happily, the fear of foreigners as carriers of the virus and the resultant xenophobia also seems to have died down. Since I have come back, I have not noticed anyone being scared of sitting next to me in the subway, avoiding me on the street, or showing me any particular hostility. No shops or bars have refused me entry, either. Last spring, all of these occurrences were common across China for foreign-looking people. Foreigners can still encounter problems when travelling, however. I have heard of recent cases of tourist sites rejecting foreigners outright, or demanding that only foreigners produce evidence of a PCR test, and it seems that hotels are also being more difficult than usual. But as long as you stay put, at least, being a foreigner no longer seems to be a problem. 

In general it feels like life in China, or at least in Beijing, has not changed too much since before the pandemic. Quite simply, after a brief interruption, the Chinese system has returned to what passes for normality here. A few restaurants have closed, and that's about it. While I realise that it is risky to make observations about the state of China's economy based on personal impressions of life in a major city, I will note that the Beijing subway seems to be as packed as it always was, suggesting that there has not been a large exodus of migrant workers who have lost their jobs. The traffic is also as bad as ever. Another unwelcome discovery is that Beijing's notorious air pollution hasn't improved one bit since before the pandemic. Good days continue to alternate with days when the AQI reaches 150-200. This might also suggest that economic activity is back to normal, although there are various different factors that contribute to Beijing's air pollution, so this inference is open to debate.

2) China has basically cut itself off from the world 

A lot has been said about the impressive way in which China has brought new transmissions of Covid-19 down to zero. Recently there have been a lot of takes blaming European and American governments for "arrogantly" failing to learn from the measures taken by China and other Asian countries. While there is truth to this, people often fail to mention one aspect of how China, and many of its neighbours in the Asia/Pacific, are keeping themselves pandemic-free: they have basically isolated themselves from the world, with extreme limitations on entries and flights and strict centralised quarantines which sometimes leave even their own citizens unable to come home. Quarantine alone is not enough, since imported cases can still pose a slight risk; as far as possible, entries from abroad need to be curtailed. The government is now ensuring China does not suffer a second wave of infections by cutting the country off from international travel to an extent unprecedented in modern history.

I detailed the process I had to go through to enter China in my previous post: it is so expensive, troublesome and unpleasant that only the truly determined would consider going through with it. The idea of doing it regularly is absurd. And the quarantine isn't even the only obstacle standing in the way of those who want to travel to China. A major issue is the way the government limits the number of inbound flights, which has driven ticket prices to crazy highs. It's particularly bad in the US, where the few direct flights to China can cost figures like 8,000 USD. Testing requirements have also been made more taxing. Currently, in most countries you are required to get a PCR test and an antibody test within 72 or even 48 hours of boarding a flight to China, and email the (negative) results to the Chinese embassy to get them certified before the flight. In many places these conditions are going to be very hard to fulfil. At the very least, there will be a serious risk of missing your flight. 

To cap it all, after a brief hiatus it seems like the authorities are once again banning entry to all foreign nationals, even if they have valid visas. Over the last two days, Chinese embassies in quite a few countries have published notices like this one, and more are bound to follow. As always, they have provided absolutely no advanced warning, causing people to lose expensive tickets. This is clearly a reaction to the second wave currently underway in much of the Northern hemisphere. Even though the vast majority of "imported cases" have come from Chinese citizens, the first reaction to a situation of stress still seems to be a blanket ban on foreigners, which can only be seen as a political decision rather than a medical one.

All this makes entering China from abroad excruciatingly difficult. A few foreign citizens like me continue to live in China, but we do so in the knowledge that for the time being we cannot leave, or if we do we can forget about coming back. No one who resides in China would dream of leaving the country for business, let alone on holiday, given how hard it would be to return. There is talk of a travel bubble being set up with Thailand, but I'll believe it when I see it, especially since the interest seems to come mostly from the Thai side.

3)  You can't go anywhere without a green code 

There is one way, of course, in which life in China has indeed changed from when I left in January: you can't live without a green code proving you are not a potential carrier of Covid-19. Every province now has its own smartphone app that assigns you a "health code" with a specific colour based on your level of safety. A green code means you are safe, a yellow one means you should self-isolate, and a red code means that you should already have been dragged into quarantine. It has become hard to do much in China without using these apps. If I didn't have a green code, I would be unable to enter hospitals, banks, the office building where I work, most shopping malls and certain neighbourhoods of Beijing. It is hard to know when you might be required to scan a QR code and show your colour code. In Beijing you no longer need to do so to access public transport, but in some cities you still do.

The colour codes are assigned to you by apps hosted by the WeChat and Alipay platforms. In order to sign up, you have to provide your ID or passport number, some other basic info about yourself, and answer some questions about your health status (I have a strong suspicion that reporting symptoms of any kind, even a runny nose, will lead to a green code not being assigned to you). If you have travelled to other provinces within the last 14 days, you will be asked to select the provinces, the cities and even the precise districts that you visited. The app doesn't only make use of the information the users report themselves, however. As a Xinhua report from June states, "the health information reported by the users only constitutes a part of what is used to asses their health status (....) An individual's health information can come from different sources, and the data provided by district authorities, hospitals and their workplace can all be used for reference."

To be fair, over the last few months the requirement to show your health code has become rather less ubiquitous in Chinese cities, and most individual shops and restaurants no longer require it. All the same the system has become a basic feature of life in China, and its use can easily be scaled up again if there are new outbreaks. It is hard to imagine it being completely abandoned in the near future. While other countries in the region have established successful "track and trace" systems, I don't think there is anywhere else in the world where you are regularly asked to scan a QR code to enter public spaces. 

In China itself, the complete lack of privacy this system entails would have raised some serious eyebrows before the pandemic, but in the current environment most people haven't the slightest thing to say about it. Any steps the state takes to keep the pandemic at bay are accepted as necessary by the populace, which is only too grateful that their government is saving them from descending into the spiral of new lockdowns and overwhelmed hospitals which they see unfolding in much of the world. I myself have already got used to showing my green code all the time, and no longer give it much thought. Just like I no longer give much thought to passing through a metal detector every time I take the subway, having to show my passport just to buy a train or bus ticket out of town etc...

Having said all this, back in May there was a public outcry in Hangzhou after the local government proposed making the system pretty much permanent, assigning a colour to each citizen based on their medical records and lifestyle. This Black Mirror-esque proposal seems to have been dropped as a result of the barrage of negative comments it received on the internet, showing that there is still some concern left over people's privacy.

Another thing about the health code apps is that they have made it even less possible to live in China without using a smartphone, and without installing WeChat (or Alipay). It has also brought the "digital divide" between the elderly and the rest of the population into stark relief, with reports of retirees being unable to board buses in some cities because they could not show a health code. Ad hoc solutions will probably be found for the elderly, but the basic situation will not change: unless you are very old, not owning a smartphone and not downloading Tencent and Alibaba's main apps is just not possible in urban China today. Not doing so doesn't only make you an eccentric; it makes you a literal outcast, and someone who is getting in the way of containing the pandemic.

From Indonesia to China: a pandemic travel odyssey

I am back in China! I had been out of the country since mid-January, just before the Covid-19 pandemic exploded in Wuhan. That was only nine months ago, but it feels like years. The time when I could just jump on a plane in any major city of the world and expect to be back in Beijing and free to roam within a few hours already seems like a distant dream. Entering China from abroad has become an ordeal that takes weeks and seriously drains your finances and patience.

Indonesia

My odyssey started off in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, the place where I spent a good chunk of this year. Back in March, the Chinese government took the completely exceptional decision of forbidding all foreign citizens from entering China, including ones with valid residence permits who normally live and work there. The only exceptions were made for diplomats and holders of the (very rarely granted) permanent residence certificate. In some cases this policy left families divided, and quite a few foreign citizens who normally live in China found themselves stuck outside the country with no idea when they might be able to return. Luckily I was able to continue working remotely from Indonesia.

Slowly, over the summer, it started becoming possible for some foreign citizens to return to China if they could obtain an invitation letter from China's Foreign Affairs Office. These are however only granted to people working in important roles or for organisations that have particular clout with the government. Finally, in mid-August, the Chinese government announced that it was making it possible for the citizens of most European countries to enter China again, as long as their residence permits were still valid. It would not however be possible to just enter with the residence permit, as it normally would be. Instead it would be necessary to apply for a new visa, which would be granted for free to anyone in possession of a non-expired Chinese residence permit.

This announcement meant that I was now able to return to China if I wanted, and I resolved to do so, spurred by the promise of a new job. But I suspected it would not prove a simple matter, and indeed it did not. I soon found out that getting a new visa for China would not be possible in Indonesia. I contacted the Chinese consulates in Jakarta and Bali, but they were adamant that they could not give me a visa unless I had an invitation letter. As a European this was actually no longer necessary for me, but apparently they had not received the memo. 

Simply because of this fact, I had no choice but to fly all the way back to Europe just to get my Chinese visa. Given that no other country in Indonesia's vicinity would let me in at the moment, that was the only option. I also had to keep in mind that after getting the visa and flying to China I would be quarantined in a hotel for two weeks, as are all incoming travellers. Getting back to China would be a major hassle and take weeks, this much was clear. 

The Chinese embassy in any EU country would be able to process my visa, so I decided to go to the Netherlands, which has a lot of direct flights from Indonesia due to its colonial history, and where I have a friend in whose home I could shelter while I waited for the visa. I had not been on a plane since before the pandemic, and even taking the flight from Yogyakarta to Jakarta felt surreal. I had to take a blood test the previous day, since proof of a negative antibody test is now required to fly within the country (it would be much more useful to require a PCR test, but those are just too expensive and their supply too limited in Indonesia). During the flight I wore both a mask and a face shield to be on the safe side, given how fast cases were rising in Indonesia.

The Netherlands

The next day I flew from Jakarta to Amsterdam. In Jakarta's huge and mostly deserted airport, the staff at check-in were dubious that the Netherlands would let me in, since entry is currently suspended for most non-EU citizens who are not legal residents of the Netherlands. However they called their Dutch counterparts and thankfully received confirmation that I would be allowed to enter, in spite of the pandemic and of Brexit. After that, things were surprisingly lax. At no point was my temperature taken, either in Indonesia or in Holland. Mask-wearing was theoretically obligatory but not strictly enforced on the 13-hour flight. On arrival in the Netherlands all passengers were offered a free PCR test because we were arriving from a "risky" country, but it was not mandatory. By no means did everyone decide to take the test. Dutch customs let me in without a second glance. I was told that I should self-isolate for 10 days, but no one asked me where I would be staying and there was absolutely no enforcement whatsoever. 

People walking outside the Dutch parliament, the Hague (September 2020)

In spite of a second wave being well underway in Holland, virtually no one was wearing a mask on the streets. In the village near Amsterdam where I stayed, everyone seemed to be happily eating outdoors and enjoying the good weather. Restaurants and shops had limits on the number of people who could enter at once, but otherwise life seemed pretty normal. I went to the Chinese consulate in the Hague and received a new visa quickly and for free without too much hassle. A couple of days before I flew back to China it was announced that, starting the following Monday, foreign citizens with valid residence permits (except for students) would be able to enter China without needing a new visa at all! This means I could have flown back directly from Indonesia if I had waited a little longer, but there was no way I could have known this in advance. 

The number of flights into China is still heavily restricted by the Chinese government, so tickets are extortionately expensive. Until a few weeks ago no direct flights to Beijing from abroad were even allowed, and every country was still permitted only one direct route into China. The only flights from the Netherlands to China go to Xiamen, on the South coast, and are operated by Xiamen airlines. The ticket I got cost around 2000 euros one way, and it was the cheapest by far. Thank goodness my job will refund it.

The Chinese authorities now require a negative PCR test taken no more than three days in advance for anyone boarding a flight to China. In many countries this can be quite hard to arrange. Luckily Amsterdam has places where tests can be taken specifically for the purpose of travel and results returned on the same day, but it is not cheap. The results also have to be authenticated by the Chinese embassy before the flight (this is done online). Three days is the very limit at which it is humanly possible to get this done on time.

When I got to my gate in Amsterdam's airport, there was no mistaking things: this was the flight to China. About 90% of the passengers were Chinese, and about half of them were wearing full white hazmat suits, as were all the Chinese staff working at the gate. Literally no one else in the whole airport was going to this extreme. It looked a bit like a gathering of astronauts, and it attracted quite some stares from the people waiting at other gates. It was already clear that this was no ordinary country I was going to. They did things differently, and they weren't messing around when it came to this virus. Another striking thing was that public announcements at the gate were provided only in Chinese. No English or Dutch, even though we were still in Holland. 

The hostesses on the flight wore hazmat suits, N95 masks and goggles, as if they were nurses in an IC unit. The contrast with the prevention measures on the flight from Indonesia to Holland was stark. There the hostesses had only worn a surgical mask, and everything else operated like normal. But on this flight passengers were not even given meals, just a bag of snacks. Wearing a mask was obligatory at all times except when eating, and this was enforced. Passengers were also given surgical gloves before entering the toilets.

During the flight special forms were handed out to the passengers, asking about our health and details about our employment and residence in China (which the authorities surely already know). What really surprised me was that the forms were only distributed in Chinese. There was no English version available, in spite of there being non-Chinese citizens on pretty much every one of these flights. I was sitting next to a couple of British girls who were flying back to jobs teaching in international schools. They knew no Chinese, and I had to translate the whole form for them. To be fair, the hostesses were friendly and would translate for passengers as much as their own English allowed. 

Quarantine in Xiamen

Once we landed, we had to wait an hour in the plane until they would let us out (this is standard nowadays). We were then taken by airport bus to the customs area. All of the airport's staff wore hazmat suits. Before going through customs, we were taken into little booths were a nose and throat swab where administered. The swabs were certainly done more thoroughly than I had experienced in Holland. I am lucky because I don't seem to find nose swabs especially painful, but the British girl who sat next to me on the plane told me she was in tears because of the pain. 

Staff at the sorting centre for arriving travellers, Xiamen.

Staff taking people's temperatures outside of the sorting centre for travellers about to be quarantined

After going through customs, we were put into buses and brought to a sorting centre where we were divided into groups and then taken to the hotels where we would spend our 14-day quarantine. There is a handful of different hotels where you might be taken, with different prices and levels of quality, but you do not get to choose which hotel you end up in.

I was taken to a fancy hotel in the city centre. The hotel was being used entirely for quarantining people; there were no ordinary guests. The lobby had a spooky air, with piles of chairs stacked up in the deserted entrance and staff in hazmat suits and masks checking us in. I have to say that I was quite satisfied with my living conditions. The room I ended up in was pretty comfortable, and the price (4900 Yuan for 14 days) was reasonable. I know people who paid more than double that to quarantine in Beijing. The wifi wasn't amazingly strong, but it worked, and the hotel allowed outside deliveries, which really makes all the difference. Some hotels don't allow deliveries during quarantine, and eating the hotel food for 14 days can become a real drag.

All the same, the whole experience was quite surreal. I could see normal life going on outside my ninth floor window, with a view of a swimming pool and a karaoke parlour, but I could not join in. Once you enter your room, you are not allowed out again for 14 days. You can open the door, but you are not even supposed to hang out in the corridor. Twice a day someone knocks on the door and takes your temperature on your doorstep. Staff never enter your room; you leave your rubbish outside for them to take away. There is no laundry service, but then why would you need it when you aren't going anywhere? Couples are sometimes allowed to quarantine together, but not always. Families have been divided, with the mother keeping one child and the father keeping the other. 

The number of tests you have to do varies by province, but in Xiamen it works like this: you do a nose and throat swab at the airport, a blood test on the second day, a nose swab on the seventh day and a final nose swab and blood test on the thirteenth day of quarantine. Once you are in the hotel the medical staff, who of course dress in full body armour, will also never enter your room. The tests are performed in the corridor, where there is a chair in front of your door for you to sit on. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you simply refused to come out one day. 

Xiamen is said to be a good city to quarantine in, because the hotels are nice and the staff tend to be helpful and friendly, and I have to say that this was also my experience. The hotel staff tried to be reasonable and helpful with their "guests", and the medical staff performing the tests did their best to be gentle and reassure people who were nervous. Even so, what I found most unnerving about the whole situation was the lack of any control, the sense that I was not being given important information, and the dread that one of my tests might come back positive.

While riding the bus to the hotel I had made friends with a young Beijinger who had come back to China from Germany, and I had added him on WeChat. On the second day of quarantine, he sent me a message. Apparently he had received a phone call informing him that there had been a positive case among the passengers on our plane, and that the following day he would receive an extra PCR test to be on the safe side. The next morning he did indeed receive an extra swab test, while I didn't, so I assumed he might have been sitting next to the infected person. On day 9 of my quarantine, however, I was also given a surprise extra nose swab. I asked the nurse why, and she said she honestly didn't know, but the doctor had said I was scheduled for an extra test.

I was also in a WeChat group for people quarantining in Xiamen, comprised mostly of foreigners and English-speakers, which turned out to be a useful source of information. From the group I gathered that other people on my same flight had also received unscheduled extra tests on different days. Perhaps it just took them time to go through all of us. As for why my Chinese friend got a phone call and I didn't, I can only assume that they only phoned the Chinese passengers because they supposed that the foreigners spoke no Chinese. The lack of communication was unnerving however, and the thought of what might happen if I tested positive was even more so.

If you test positive to any of the PCR tests you will be transferred to an isolation room in a hospital, where you will be kept until you test negative for three days in a row. This can take weeks or even months, during which you have to pay for your stay. Once you are finally declared negative, you will still have to go back to the hotel to finish your 14 day quarantine! An American who tested positive (with no symptoms) posted a description of being isolated in a hospital on Reddit, and it doesn't sound like a great situation to find yourself in. 

What's more, people who only test positive to the antibody test (the blood test) also get taken to hospital, where they are subjected to more PCR tests and a chest X-ray just to be completely sure they no longer have the virus. One lady in my WeChat group tested positive for antibodies. She suspects she had a mild case of Covid-19 in March/April. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance and had to spend the night there (and pay for it) while they waited for her results. Once everything came back negative, she was returned to the hotel. Then on day 13 she had to have her second blood test, as scheduled, and of course tested positive for antibodies again. She was taken to the hospital again, because those are the rules and common sense be damned, and this time spent two nights there and missed her flight back to Beijing. 

All this is why, when I heard of a positive case on my flight, my worry wasn't so much that if I had caught the virus I might get seriously ill, but that I would end up being isolated from the world for weeks or months on end. Thankfully all of my tests came back negative, as I could see on a special WeChat mini-program where your results are displayed. I only knew of this thanks to the WeChat group of course, no one thought of officially notifying me about it. It strikes me that if I found it so hard to figure anything out in spite of my knowledge of Chinese, it must be even worse if you don't speak the language. 

In any case, I soon found I had an awful lot of time on my hands, especially since my quarantine coincided with the Chinese national holidays, and I had to find ways to keep myself busy. I read, wrote, exercised and watched films, and the 14 days passed quickly. All in all the experience was not too uncomfortable, but then I was relatively lucky. I have heard of people in other cities finding themselves stuck in rooms that are far less nice, unable to get deliveries and getting served cold meals three times a day. Being quarantined with small children is also an entirely different ball game, and it can drive parents up the wall. 

While I was at least not trying to entertain a four-year old, I would still not want to go through the whole experience again. Between the cost, the time wasted, the sheer boredom, the nose swabs that some find painful and the nightmare scenario of testing positive, Covid-19 quarantine in China is not something you can put yourself through regularly. It is effectively almost cutting off travel between China and the rest of the world. It is good to keep in mind that the scenes of "normality" that you currently see on the streets of China are achieved in part thanks to this very abnormal level of international isolation.

A view of the room where I spent every single moment of 14 days

Beijing

On a Sunday morning, exactly two weeks after the day I had arrived, I went downstairs with my suitcase and "checked out", as if I were just an ordinary guest who had finished his holiday in Xiamen. I was given a certificate stating that I had been through quarantine and done 4 PCR tests. I had a flight for Beijing booked for that same morning, and I was driven to the airport in a van with a few others. One you finish your two-week quarantine, freedom is still not absolute. Local regulations are that those who live in Xiamen need to self-isolate at home for an extra 7 days, and those who don't are driven to the airport or train station and have to leave immediately. 

The Xiamen airport was packed with carefree crowds, many of them probably returning from internal travel for the national holidays. Once I had checked in and I was free to wander around the departures lounge on my own, I felt some sort of freedom for the first time in 14 days. It also struck me that for the first time in months I wasn't really worried about catching Covid-19 from other people, since in China this is no longer a serious concern. But I still couldn't completely relax, because I didn't know what might face me when I got back to Beijing.

Quite a few returnees from abroad report being asked to self-isolate at home for a further week, or even two weeks, after finishing quarantine and going back to where they live in China. This is not a general regulation in Beijing, but it may be required by your neighbourhood committee. Foreign teachers living on campuses have also been asked to self-isolate at home by their employer. Fortunately I am not a teacher, but I did worry about the folks from my neighbourhood committee somehow getting wind of my return and showing up at my flat to bother me.

I really did not want to have to spend any further time locked up at home, especially since it just isn't necessary. I understand the fact that people entering China from abroad are being subjected to a strict two-week quarantine. Now that the pandemic is under control it makes sense not to want to let the virus back in again. I also understand the fact that they want to test new arrivals, although personally I think that a single PCR test and then 14 days of quarantine would really be quite sufficient. But after two weeks of quarantine and a number of tests, asking people to stay home for any further length of time is simply unjustified. 

Such measures seem to be the result of an attitude of wanting to be completely on the safe side, but without taking common sense or the comfort of the people involved into any kind of consideration. This unreasonable level of caution is not limited to the authorities. Even my organization's HR manager asked me if I could continue working from home for 10 days after the end of quarantine, "for everyone's safety". I pointed out to my director that after two weeks of seclusion and four negative swab tests, I really posed no risk to anyone. He agreed with me, perhaps because he came back from abroad himself in May and knows what it's like. 

My flight to Beijing arrived at the city's new Daxing airport, which looked as fancy and shiny as I was expecting. I just picked up my luggage and took the train into town; no one asked me a thing. I had heard about how I would need a green "health code" once in Beijing, but nobody required to see it. I took the train, then the subway, and then got out at my stop and walked back to my old flat. At the entrance to my community there was no security and no one stopped me or questioned me, something I had been somewhat worried about. 

A few hours later, I began to realise that in fact there was a problem to solve: I still needed my health code. In China nowadays, every province has an app or mini-program that tracks your movements and assigns you a health code: green, yellow or red. A green code means you're considered safe, yellow means that you should self-isolate at home, and red means that you should be in quarantine. When you enter various public places and residential areas, you need to scan a QR code and show that you have a green code. Without one, your life will be pretty restricted.

This is what the English version of the Health Kit app for Beijing looks like. "Query on me" and "Scan the QR Code" will produce your colour code. 

I figured out which WeChat mini-program I had to use to get my Beijing health code (foreign citizens use a different one from the Chinese), and found that the app would not give me a code. I got a message saying that I had been outside of Beijing in the last 14 days, and I should contact my neighbourhood committee or the "relevant departments". I was loathe to contact them, as I suspected they would tell me to self-isolate at home. At the same time, I knew that without a green code I would not be able to enter shopping malls, hospitals, or the office building where I work, and I didn't know what other restrictions I might encounter.

That evening I went out for a walk in my neighbourhood, which looked much the same as when I left in January. Some people still wear masks on the street, but not everyone. I found that I could enter most restaurants and shops without presenting a health code. Apparently a few months ago things were much stricter, and most restaurants wouldn't let you enter. All the same, it was clear that without a green code I was still a borderline outlaw, and that my mobility would be restricted until I had one. This system of health codes may be part of what is keeping new outbreaks at bay, but it has also introduced a level of control on people's movements that would have been hard to fathom only one year ago. What you are supposed to do if you don't have a smartphone or WeChat I really don't know. I assumed this situation might last for 14 days. I wasn't keen on continuing to work from home for another two weeks, but I thought I might not have a choice.

Thankfully, the next morning I woke up and found that the WeChat mini-program had decided to assign me my green code. Why it took so long I don't know, but it seems like other people arriving in Beijing after quarantine are also finding that they need to wait until the following morning to get the code. This can cause a real problem if you don't have a place to stay. One person I know of was rejected by a number of hotels for not having the green code, until he found a place that would take him with only the "end of quarantine" certificate. 

In any case, with my green code I was now a fully functioning and legitimate member of Chinese society again, and could consider my quarantine to be well and truly over. A journey that had started over a month earlier and had taken me across three countries, back and forth between Europe and Asia, and involved the most surreal quarantine experience I could have imagined, had finally come to an end.

Peter Hessler’s coronavirus piece: privilege and self-censorship?

The latest controversy to rattle the rather esoteric and increasingly acrimonious world of China-watchers has been Geremie R. Barme's response to Peter Hessler's latest essay for the New Yorker, "How China Controlled the Coronavirus". The Australian Sinologist's attack on the American author is pretty savage; Barme accuses Hessler of self-censoring, of writing from a position of privilege, and of essentially being an apologist for the Chinese state.

I read Hessler's essay when it came out last month, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. For one of the most perceptive Western writers on China it felt like a rather vacuous effort, if well-written as always. I learnt little new about China, or even about how the country brought the pandemic under control (in spite of not actually having been in China myself since January). The essay might be of more interest for people unfamiliar with China, but for those who know the country well it doesn't really say anything new.

On the other hand, the gist of Barme's criticism seems to centre around Peter Hessler's failure to talk about the really sensitive issues in today's China: the human rights abuses, the stifling of any dissent within academia, the total control over public life and people's movements which the coronavirus crisis has only intensified, and the initial public anger at the way the government handled the pandemic.

I happen to think that Barme's criticism is seriously over the top. Comparing Peter Hessler to Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times from 1922 to 1936, is just unwarranted any way you look at it. Duranty was an apologist for Stalinism who infamously denied the dreadful Soviet famines of 1932-33, claiming that "any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda", even as millions starved in Ukraine and elsewhere in the USSR. Even once he was back in America, he defended Stalin's show trials.

Apart from the fact that China today is not Stalin's USSR, Hessler is also no Duranty. You only need to read his books to see that. They are often intelligently critical of the country, and certainly don't whitewash its bad sides. In his most famous book, River Town, a description of his two years teaching English literature in a small town in Sichuan, Hessler doesn't hide his disdain for the propaganda in the school textbooks he had to use, nor does he shy away from describing the Chinese as "colonizers" while writing about a trip to Xinjiang. Same goes for his later books. This is no apologist for the CPC. 

Hessler's latest essay cannot fairly be described in such terms either. He is not simply repeating the talking points of government propaganda, and in fact at one point he does touch upon some of the most delicate issues: 

"As the spring wore on, conversations often included a standard conclusion: the pandemic showed that Chinese value life over freedom, whereas Americans take the opposite approach. I disliked such simplifications, which failed to consider the initial Chinese coverup of the virus, or the government’s policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, or the fact that any number of democracies were handling the crisis much better than the Americans."

Barme notes that a translated version of the essay has been circulated on the Chinese internet "with official sanction", and that Hessler is now being described as a "Good American". He fails to point out however that the translation is censored: for instance, the last sentence in the quote above is left out. It is easy to turn a balanced piece into a propaganda coup when you censor the bits that don't fit your narrative. The problem here isn't so much Hessler's writing, as much as a censorship for which he bears no blame.

A bit further down, Hessler also states that "many aspects of the Chinese strategy could never be adopted in America or in any other democracy" (this was purposefully mistranslated in the Chinese version as "any other country"). All in all it is clear that this is hardly an article fit for China Daily, and Hessler's points aren't unreasonable. It isn't unreasonable to claim that China has been successful at controlling the pandemic, because it clearly has been. Yes, many neighbouring countries haven't done badly either, but given China's size and the fact that the pandemic started there, the system's success at bringing new infections down to virtually nil has been quite impressive. It also isn't unreasonable to ask whether some aspects of the Chinese approach might have something to teach the US, which has had 50 times more deaths.

And yet, I can see where some of the criticism is coming from. At one point in River Town Hessler writes about the way that he and his fellow American Peace Corps volunteers always seemed to have the effect of encouraging their students in Fuling to be questioning and irreverent, perhaps too much for their own good. He puts the reason down to this: "we were waiguoren (foreigners), and we didn’t have that voice in the back of our minds that warned us when certain lines were being crossed.” After spending so long in China, Hessler has clearly developed that voice in the back of his mind. At some points it feels like he really is trying to describe some sort of "Kumbaya China", as Barme puts it. Take this quote:

Serena’s response to her nonfiction experience—first rejected, then denied credit—was to ask politely if she could finish out the term’s work and then do it over again in the spring, this time on the books. That was one tradition that hadn’t changed: in China, a student always respects her teacher, even if the teacher is a moron.

It is interesting that Hessler should say this, because in December last year there were rumours that he had been reported by one of his own students at Sichuan University for teaching content that was "subversive" or "offensive to China". While it is unclear whether this actually happened, and Hessler still seems to be teaching there quite happily, plenty of other Chinese university professors have been reported by their own students in recent years, and there is no way Hessler isn't aware of this.

Or take this excerpt:

But I worried about my daughters, who were the only Westerners at a school of some two thousand students. Our isolation increased throughout the spring: most of my American acquaintances had left, and it became rare to see a non-Chinese person on the street. At the end of May, the twins told my wife, Leslie, and me that a boy in their class had made some anti-American comments, but we didn’t say anything to the teacher. Virtually all of the girls’ classmates treated them warmly, and, with everything on the news, it seemed inevitable that there would be scattered instances of anti-American sentiment. That week, George Floyd had been killed, and the American death toll from the coronavirus was approaching a hundred thousand.

The teacher, though, responded quickly. The following Monday, she stood before the class and told a story that, in the Chinese way, emphasized science, education, and effort. She talked about Elon Musk, and she described how his California-based company had successfully launched a manned rocket into space the previous weekend. At the end of the story, she said, “Every country has its strong points and its weak points.”

It's great that Hessler and his family didn't have any trouble, and that the teacher at his daughter's school was so enlightened. Being stuck in a campus in Chengdu probably helped. Out in China's big coastal cities, however, there were quite a few instances of discrimination against foreigners, and particularly against the African community in Guangzhou, who were targeted in an unacceptable fashion both by local people and local officials after a few of their number tested positive.

The fact is that there has been plenty of nastiness in China's response to the pandemic that Hessler doesn't mention, or only mentions in a very oblique fashion. Hessler cannot have failed to notice the exceptional (and quickly forgotten) wave of public anger in early February after the death of a whistleblowing doctor, and yet he doesn't mention it at all. Perhaps he has forgotten it too, but more likely he just doesn't feel comfortable talking about it. 

The crux of the matter is that Peter Hessler currently lives and works in China, and just like all those who do he has to measure his words carefully. Officially accredited foreign reporters have far more leeway (although even they may find their visas revoked if they really cross the line), but Hessler is not one of those. In theory he could even be accused of breaking the law by engaging in unaccredited reporting, as Barme points out. He certainly knows that if he wants to carry on with his life in Chengdu he needs to tread carefully, and only mention sensitive issues in passing and obliquely, or not at all.

It wasn't like this ten or twenty years ago, when Hessler wrote his books. Censorship was far more lax in general, for certain, but also Westerners living in China seemed to enjoy a certain level of immunity: as long as you didn't write in Chinese or try and appeal directly to the Chinese public, you could say almost anything you wanted. This has changed, and nowadays any writer based in China will feel the presence of that invisible censor peering over their shoulder as soon as they stray into dangerous territory. I am pretty sure that even Hessler's decision to use the turn of phrase "China was the first country to experience the pandemic" was taken because it has become impossible to openly state that the virus originated in China.

Barme claims that Hessler has "unexamined Caucasian privilege", leading him to write the way he does, but if anything it may be the opposite: part of the reason Hessler is so cautious is the fact that being white or having a foreign passport no longer affords you much protection. The real question that should be asked is whether it is problematic for Hessler to continue explaining the country to the outside world, when he finds himself in a situation where he has to measure every word carefully and make sure he doesn't cross any "red lines". On the ground reporting is valuable of course, but then so is the chance to give the full picture without self-censoring.

On xenophobia and administrative overreach

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light and exacerbated tensions and inequalities that already existed all over the world. Among its many side-effects it has engendered fear and suspicion towards foreigners and minorities, or sometimes even people from elsewhere in a country, as possible carriers of a dangerous virus. Initially it was the Chinese, or those who looked like they might be Chinese, who found themselves under suspicion around the world, but later on many other groups started feeling the heat.

In China too, the possibility that foreigners might carry the virus with them from abroad has turned into a driving factor, and an excuse, for xenophobia. The EU Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai recently surveyed its member companies, and found that discrimination on the basis of foreign nationality or appearance had been experienced by 39% of respondents or their colleagues. And this is in Mainland China's most cosmopolitan city, known to be far more friendly to outsiders than the rest of the country. Over half of respondents felt that reports in the local media portraying the virus as "imported" are fuelling xenophobia.

The phenomenon began in earnest towards the middle of March, when it became clear that the pandemic was mostly under control within China and exploding in the rest of the world. At this point the big concern in China became new cases of Covid-19 imported from abroad. Very quickly, levels of fear and discrimination towards foreigners living in the country skyrocketed. 

In cities across China, people who do not look Chinese started having unpleasant experiences: locals very obviously refusing to sit next to them on public transport; being refused entry into shops, restaurants and shopping malls based solely on their features and skin colour; being barred from entering xiaoqu (gated neighbourhoods) for being foreign, while Chinese people entered quite happily; taxi drivers refusing to pick them up; being monitored by their neighbourhood committees and local officials to a greater extent than their neighbours; and in the worst cases, being yelled at or berated on the streets, even in spite of wearing a mask. Hotels started rejecting foreign guests to an even greater extent than usual, very often citing directives from local officials. In most such situations, being able to show a green code on Alipay's Health App made no difference: no foreigners meant no foreigners, green code or not.

Never mind that the great majority of "imported cases" of Covid-19 actually belonged to Chinese citizens returning from abroad, of whom there was a much bigger number than there were foreigners entering the country. Never mind that the only person guilty of flying to China while purposefully concealing that she had coronavirus symptoms was a Chinese lady living in Massachusetts, who returned home because in the US she had been repeatedly denied both a test for the virus and hospitalisation (she got into serious trouble when the Chinese authorities understood what she had done). In spite of all this, foreigners suddenly became a prime target both of the people's anxiety and of official measures.

Of course, foreigners in China are not all equal. Wealthy foreign executives living in Shanghai may have felt almost no inconvenience at all. Others have been less fortunate. The worst of it, by far, has been experienced by Guangzhou's African community. The city has China's only real African enclave, an area where traders from all over the continent reside and do business. Although the community has been dwindling for years, partly due to greater strictness in the enforcement of visa regulations, it still exists. 

Towards the end of March, numerous personal reports emerged of Africans who had not travelled outside of China for months being locked into their flats by the authorities and tested repeatedly for the virus. Others were kicked out of their homes by their landlords, while the police refused to help. Those kicked out often spent days wandering the streets, unable to find hotels that would welcome them or even restaurants and shops that would let them in. Groups of volunteers, mostly Chinese, helped bring them food and find them places to stay.

This wave of xenophobia quickly gained attention in the international media. The Guardian and the New York Times both ran features on the general animosity towards foreigners that was sweeping over the country, while numerous outlets reported on the plight of the Africans in Guangzhou. Coverage wasn't limited to English-language media either, as this Italian report can testify.

The mistreatment of Africans led to a real diplomatic crisis. The reports, corroborated by video evidence, sparked a wave of indignation across the continent, and led to Chinese ambassadors being read the riot act in Nigeria and various other countries. Photos of a sign outside a McDonalds in Guangzhou stating that the establishment could not accept black customers further inflamed the public. Unsurprisingly the Chinese authorities denied anything was wrong and blamed the foreign media for slandering their country, but it seems they also quietly took some action to rein in the discrimination. Perhaps they realised what an own-goal the whole thing has been for the country that is the biggest creditor and trading partner for the African continent as a whole.

In any case, the worst of the paranoia about foreigners seems to be over for now, especially since foreign citizens have been unable to enter China for months except in special cases (not that most of the public is aware of this). Even the new outbreak of Covid-19 in Beijing in June does not seem to have led to a significant upturn in xenophobia, perhaps because the origin was clearly local (although they did their best to link it to imported salmon). In spite of this the problem still lingers, with occasional reports of foreigners being singled out for attention by the police and of bars not allowing foreigners in, particularly in Beijing. It is worth pointing out that in many of these cases "foreign" simply means non-Chinese looking, since it is features rather than nationality that cause people to be singled out. Many international students in China have also found themselves locked in their campuses for months on end, even as life outside goes back to normal.

For long-term foreign residents this turn of events will sadly not be too surprising (except for those who insist on remaining wilfully naive, of which there are many). Chinese society clearly has the potential to act like this, especially in times of crisis. Scapegoating of foreigners is a real problem, particularly for black people but also for other foreigners. The narrative that foreign citizens enjoy special privileges has long allowed the public to rationalise and justify any mistreatment they may face. 

Back in March cases of foreigners going out while they were supposed to be self-quarantining, behaving badly towards staff while under centralised quarantine, or picnicking in parks without masks (very often next to Chinese people doing exactly the same thing) were widely publicised by the media and pandered to the preconceived idea of "entitled" foreigners not respecting the rules, while cases of discrimination went unreported. There is no doubt that this media-driven sentiment helped to create the unfortunate situations described above, as well as an outpouring of online xenophobia (for an example, see this). 

There are those who have tried to minimise the issue, claiming that in the end anything suffered by foreigners in China is nothing compared to what Chinese and Asians have had to put up with in the rest of the world. And indeed, cases of verbal harassment and even violent assault against people of East Asian origin due to Covid-19 have been sadly numerous, particularly in Western countries. But then again, surely being kicked out of your flat and spending days on the street or being locked inside your home simply for being African should count as being subjected to a form of violence? 

Even if we take the less extreme forms of discrimination that have surfaced against other foreigners in China, we are still talking about things that would cause a riot in most of the world, including barring people from entering shopping malls and staying in hotels due to their foreign passports and/or appearance. It is true that this xenophobia has not, generally, descended into violence, but it has been institutionalised and accepted by society to an extent hardly seen elsewhere. 

Having said all of this, xenophobia and racism are probably not the only culprits here. It is undeniable that some foreigners, and especially Africans, have been subjected to real discrimination in China due to Covid-19. On the other hand, much of what they have been through is not different from what people from Hubei, and especially Wuhan, experienced at the start of the pandemic. After the Spring Festival, Chinese citizens with a Hubei ID living in other parts of China found themselves targeted by local officials and ostracised by the public. Hotels wouldn't let them stay. Neighbours shunned them, especially if they had got back from Hubei shortly before the province was sealed off. In some cases families literally had the doors to their flats chained shut by local officials, mirroring what would happen to Africans in Guangzhou a couple of months later. In another case, a county in Hebei offered a literal reward to anyone who could report people from Wuhan.

It is clear that in both cases, much of what has been driving this behaviour is the huge pressure on local governments to stop the virus from spreading in the areas under their watch. It is made clear to local officials that this should be their one and only priority. In order to achieve it, they are quite ready to subject any group considered "at risk" to unreasonably harsh measures, whether it's people from Hubei, Africans or foreigners in general. Sometimes the measures are so broad as to be absurd, and target people regardless of their travel history, evidence of being tested etc... I am sure it would be equally effective to target people in a more focused way, rather than treating entire groups as if they literally have the plague. But why not be on the safe side? The rights and comfort of the people in question aren't believed to matter, and almost nobody will step up to defend them in the current climate. In fact, much of society seems happy to pile on, driven by fear and latent resentment. 

China's system of governance has been highly effective at containing the pandemic within its own borders (notwithstanding the mistakes made right at the start, which deserve their own debate). It would be wrong to deny this just because official statistics are unreliable, as some have tried to do. Covid-19 outbreaks cannot easily be covered up, and there is good evidence that outside of Hubei the virus never really took much hold. Masks alone cannot account for this success. Mass testing, tracing, centralised quarantine, strict lockdowns and neighbourhood committees enforcing the rules all played a part. On the other hand, before heaping praise on China's response it is important to understand the inevitable side effects of a system where the "good of the nation" is put above the rights of individuals and of entire groups. How effective different countries and political systems have been in their response to Covid-19 is going to be a major talking point for years to come. That is why it is important to see the full picture, lest we fall prey to easy rhetoric.