lotus

- re resource allocation: hospitals in wuhan ditched govt-related chain of command and appealed to the society for donation. posts on donations for chn home & abroad (how/what to donate, how to supervise the process etc) are mainly written & maintained by ordinary citizens..

- re so-called 'rumours': (some) state media, commercial media have done a good job at fact-checking and debugging rumours. but the most timely and well-maintained ones may be websites maintained, again, by ordinary citizens...

...^ case in point: https://shimo.im/docs/JTrxH8wwxGyVd96r/read?scene=2&clicktime=1579768675&enterid=1579768675&source=timeline&dt_dapp=1&dt_platform=com.douban.activity.wechat_friends&from=timeline&isappinstalled=0 … this website is a crowd-source efforts to verify information re the virus.

...all these instances demonstrate how and how much non-govt orgs and individuals (aka, CIVIL SOCIETY) can be of help in public crisis. and yet, anyone who has been following chn politics & regulations on online info in recent years know what happened to those two words.

...my prediction is that we won't see much propaganda yet at this critical time but soon (probably sooner than it should be), this crisis would be touted as a case that showcases the strengths of chn's political system & determinations of (central) govt to protect its ppl...

...which i dont doubt, and there are some very good efforts, coordination, and timely responses by govts (see henan, zhejiang, and ministry-level responses etc)...

...but the qs are why are we supposed to only rely on govts? and for govts, why are they almost the only one to take the blame? had there been some well-developed CSOs, and a channel to work with them, there might have been less pressures on govts + a more effict response time