On January 3, 2020, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist from Central Wuhan Hospital in China, was summoned by local police. His crime? A couple weeks earlier, Li had shared an image of a diagnostic report with some fellow doctors on the popular messaging platform WeChat. The image, which showed a patient infected with a novel strain of the SARS coronavirus, ended up going viral.
The police accused Li of “making false comments” that “severely disturbed the social order.” The doctor was asked to sign a warning letter agreeing to stop spreading “rumors” about the virus, or else face prosecution.
A little over a month later, Li passed away after contracting the coronavirus.
Readers may remember this story. The warning issued to Li, and his subsequent death from COVID-19, led to one of the largest cyberprotests in China.
After his death, Chinese social media users set to work sharing Li’s story. Their purpose was straightforward: They wanted not only to acknowledge the doctor’s attempts to raise awareness of the virus, but also to call out the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for waiting to disclose vital public health information. Protestors demanding free speech on TikTok held signs quoting Li, who said in an interview, “A healthy society should not have just one voice.”
But almost immediately, many of the social media posts about Li’s whistleblowing disappeared from cyberspace.
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