Whistleblower Doctor Jiang Yanyong Who Exposed China’s Sars Cover-Up Dies At 91

The following year, Dr. Jiang again challenged Beijing. He called on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to acknowledge its 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters had been wrong – and that hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians had been killed.

He wrote of his experience working as a surgeon in Beijing on that night. In a letter, he recounted how authorities “acted in a frenzied fashion, using tanks, machine guns, and other weapons to suppress the totally unarmed students and citizens”.

Ordinary Chinese would be “increasingly disappointed and angry” with the CCP’s view of the protests as a counter-revolutionary riot, he said. “Our party must address the mistake it has made,” he wrote.

He and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were later detained, but Dr. Jiang remained for years undeterred on the topic. He wrote a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019, denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown as a “crime”.

Dr. Jiang was born in 1931 in the eastern city of Hangzhou to a wealthy banking family and went into medicine after seeing his aunt die of tuberculosis. He is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter, according to South China Morning Post.

Over his lifetime he received several civil honours recognizing his public stands, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2004.

“He broke China’s habit of silence and forced the truth of Sars into the open,” the award citation read.

Dr. Jiang’s experience has drawn comparisons with China’s initial approach to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Li Wenliang, an eye doctor in Wuhan, was investigated by police for “spreading rumours” after trying to warn people of a “Sars-like virus” in December 2019.

After falling sick from Covid himself, Dr. Li said on Chinese social media that he wondered why authorities were saying no medical staff had been infected. Dr. Li died of the virus in February 2020.