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By Patricia Adams

As the death rate from the coronavirus climbs across China, so too does defiance toward totalitarian rule not seen since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

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First came “Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear,” a Feb. 2 demand from Tsinghua law professor Xu Zhangrun for press freedom, free speech, freedom of assembly and association, the end to secret police surveillance of the internet, and respect for the basic universal rights, in particular the right to vote in open elections. China, he wrote, “needs to ground itself substantively in the concept that Sovereignty Resides in the People.”

Then on Feb. 7, eight other scholars joined Prof. Xu in “The Right to Freedom of Speech Starts Today,” an “Open Letter to the National People’s Congress” that blamed the coronavirus crisis, and China’s pariah status, on government secrecy. “For thirty years the Chinese have been made to surrender their freedom in exchange for safety, and now they fall prey to a public health crisis and are less safe than ever,” the scholars wrote. “A humanitarian disaster is upon us. The speed with which the rest of the world is repelled by China is faster than the spread of the virus, leaving China in an unprecedented global isolation.”