When something disappears from the Internet in China, netizens joke that it has been “river-crabbed,” a play on the euphemism “harmonized.” The River Crab Archive is a collection of blog post titles, weibo, and other materials deleted from their original sources on Chinese websites, either found by CDT or brought to our attention by outside projects. The editors have selected river-crabbed information of note from CDT Chinese’s ongoing compendium of the same name (河蟹档案).
A new strain of bird flu has already claimed three lives in and around Shanghai. Some of these cases are being reported weeks after the first infection was detected, raising fears of a repeat of the SARS fiasco. CDT has selected the following deleted Weibo posts from FreeWeibo:
@作家草军书: China once again achieves a global first. The world’s first case of human H7N9 virus was discovered in Shanghai. The patient died on March 4, but his condition was not announced until March 31. They waited a month to tell the masses about such a frightening infectious disease. Obviously officials did this for stability maintenance; they had to wait for the Two Sessions [National People’s Congress] to end before they said anything. Any official explanation is a lie. I believe the authorities knew early on that this is a terrible disease. The patient’s family may have been secretly quarantined. How revolting.
中国又领先了世界一回。全球首次发现人类感染H7N9病毒事发上海。患者3月4日死亡，3月31日才公布疫情。这么可怕的传染病拖了一个月才向民众公开，显然是官方的维稳需要，必须等两会开完了才能公布。官方的任何解释都是撒谎。我相信，官方早就知道这是极厉害的传染病，患者家人可能早就被悄悄隔离，龌龊
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April 1, 2013 at 8:24 a.m.
@葛红兵: RT @williamontheway: Mainland media place no importance on the news that three people in Shanghai and Anhui contracted human H7N9 avian flu, and that two have died. But it’s headline news in just about every Hong Kong paper. http://t.cn/zTASCAx
上海安徽三人感染H7N9禽流感，兩人死亡的新聞，內地傳媒並不重視。但此則新聞幾乎佔據全港報章的頭條。
(@williamontheway via Instagram)
April 2, 2013 at 11:54 p.m.
@香港在線: H7N9 flu is scary. What’s even scarier is hiding information on the disease. The case of atypical pneumonia [SARS] 10 years ago offers a bitter lesson. The Ministry of Health at the time hid the truth. As soon as Doctor Jiang Yanyong of PLA No. 301 Hospital realized the gravity of the problem, he emailed two mainland state media groups. But tragically, no one paid any attention to him. Finally, two American news outlets revealed the story to the world, saving countless lives. This is a profound lesson: when China is at an impasse, it cannot always ask for help from the U.S.
H7N9流感可怕，更可怕的是隐瞒疫情，10年前非典就是惨痛的教训。当时卫生部官员隐瞒真相，解放军301医院蒋彦永医生意识到问题的可怕性，马上电邮内地两家官媒，但悲催的是并没有人理会。最终通过美国两家媒体向全世界披露了非典实情，挽救了无数生命。教训深刻，中国人不能总是在走投无路时求助美国。
April 2, 2013 at 10:05 p.m.
Via CDT Chinese.
