Bloomberg New Economy: The Cost of Censorship

On Jan. 3, police in Wuhan, China, summoned a local physician to deliver an official “admonition.” Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, had alerted his colleagues in a private WeChat group to a SARS-like virus being passed from human to human in the city of 11 million. His post had leaked to the wider internet, and he stood accused of “rumor-mongering,” a potentially career-threatening charge.

Li is now dead, struck down by the coronavirus he sought to warn about. His mother and father are hospitalized with fever. Tens of thousands of Wuhan residents have been sickened and, since the city sits at the central crossroads of China—a hub of rail, road and river transport—the virus has spread all over the country and to the rest of the world.