China’s response to the coronavirus shows what it learned from the Sars cover-up | Thomas Abraham

Beijing is determined to crush this disease as firmly as it crushes dissent. But there is no guarantee a lockdown will work

A new disease arrives in a Chinese winter - is history repeating itself? At the end of 2002, Sars erupted in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Nearly two decades on, another new virus has struck at roughly the same time of year, this time in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Though the diseases are similar - Sars and the new Wuhan virus are from the same coronavirus family, and both attack the lungs - there is a great deal of difference in the way China has responded to these outbreaks.

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