FROM OUR OBSESSION

Even small changes in China have global effects.

When the SARS outbreak hit China in 2003, only 6% of the population had access to the internet. Seventeen years later, that number has increased tenfold: more than 61% of the Chinese population are now online, according to the latest government figures.

The daily lives of Chinese citizens today are shaped, to a large extent, by something that didn’t even exist in 2003: WeChat. Launched in 2011, the all-encompassing app is, for many in China, the internet itself. It’s where citizens read, chat, shop, socialize, and pay for everything from taxi rides to groceries. It’s also a platform where the state surveils its people.

This is the backdrop against which China’s coronavirus outbreak, which has sickened some 2,000 people (link in Chinese) and killed nearly…