Chinese coronavirus linguistic war

From a Taiwanese colleague:

In the struggle against Wǔhàn fèiyán 武漢肺炎 ("Wuhan pneumonia"), Taiwan has to fight the war on three fronts: (1) trying to stop the virus at its borders; (2) trying to join the WHO for world-wide collaboration and disease information; and (3) fighting against the Communist Chinese dictatorial linguistic policies.  The linguistic policy on disease terminology is really weird; it smacks of George Orwell's 1984.

He cites this article in Chinese and this facebook page (also in Chinese).  Here's another article in Chinese from Taiwan that sticks to "Wuhan pneumonia" despite the pressure from WHO and the PRC government to adopt a name that is not transparent with regard to the origin of the disease.

The epidemic is currently called "coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)" in English, but was formerly known as 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease and a swiftly shifting series of other names, including the informal "Wuflu", since it has as its epicenter the sprawling city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province.  See also 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak

Yet, the disease began in Wuhan, Wuhan remains the epicenter of the disease, and — despite spreading to all the other provinces of the PRC and to dozens of countries around the world and cruise ships on the ocean — 97% of the deaths from the novel coronavirus and 80% of confirmed cases are in Wuhan and surrounding cities of Hubei Province.  Calling it Wǔhàn fèiyán 武漢肺炎 ("Wuhan pneumonia") makes a lot of sense.

 

Readings

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