Thirteen million Chinese in the central city of Xi’an continue to languish after two weeks of a total lockdown. The stories of their suffering, of avoidable miscarriages, of undelivered medicines, food, and sanitary products, evince the Chinese Communist Party’s callous evil.
But as all good communists understand, and as George Orwell famously taught us, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Consider what’s happening right now in Hong Kong as the city grapples with a partial lockdown. Following a recent party at a high-end tapas restaurant, at least two guests tested positive for the coronavirus. But this wasn’t just any party. It was a birthday celebration for Witman Hung, a newly elected member of the newly purified Hong Kong Legislative Council. I say purified because these are the first elections since China introduced new rules limiting electoral candidacy only to those who have proved sufficient “patriotism” or loyalty to the CCP. The communists introduced their new electoral rules, a defining breach of China’s obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a legal international treaty, after realizing that free people would never freely vote for communist autocracy.
But I digress. Back to Hung’s party. As the South China Morning Post reported, the event “lasted six hours from 6 p.m. to midnight, [and] was attended by a who’s who of the establishment, including top officials and lawmakers.” This included Hong Kong Home Affairs Secretary Caspar Tsui Ying-wai and Junius Ho Kwan-yiu.
Yet far from being embarrassed at offering such a poor example to those it is sworn to serve, the CCP is outraged that it’s even being criticized. The top lawmaker from Hong Kong to Beijing, Tam Yiu-chung has defended the party guests. And in a truly stunning remark, Ho told the South China Morning Post that the party guests “are the victims.” Instead, he blames Cathay Pacific flight attendants who broke quarantine rules and then tested positive for the virus.
There is, of course, no evidence that the flight attendants were responsible for the positive cases at the party. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Chinese Communist Party is above the law. But just pause for a second and contemplate the gall it takes to make a statement such as Ho’s.
Think about the political culture of entitlement and disregard for public service that it so unambiguously encapsulates. Think about how it connects, ideologically, to the genocidal arrogance that defines the Chinese Communist Party at home and the imperial arrogance that defines it abroad. Think about the utter shame it casts on top American CEOs such as Intel’s Pat Gelsinger and Mars’s Grant F. Reid who act as happy serfs for this regime.
While the censors on Weibo work overtime to hide the worst stories of Xi’an’s despair and incompetence, Chinese President Xi Jinping excuses his partying people in Hong Kong. As the Xi’an lockdown began, I suggested that Xi might face pressure over his strategy for dealing with the pandemic. Indeed he has. Still, the dichotomy between how Xi treats people in Xi’an and his apparatchiks in Hong Kong reminds us of something else.
Xi’s regime deserves a very negative reckoning with history.
