Record set straight on China’s social support for suffering student

By Huang Lanlan Source:Global Times Published: 2020/1/20 14:48:40

○ Western media have made use of the death of a Chinese student and distorted this single case as a symbol of "failure" in China's poverty relief

○ The media, including BBC and CNN, reported her death with misinformation

○ More than 700 million Chinese have cast off poverty over the past four decades, representing more than 70 percent of global poverty reduction

Wu Huayan in hospital Photo: China News Service

Some Western media have been attacking China's poverty alleviation work with distorted reporting of a Chinese student who died recently, which showed their biased opinion toward China, said observers.

The 24-year-old student, Wu Huayan, was a junior student of Guizhou Forerunner College in Southwest China's Guizhou Province. She died of heart failure at a hospital in Tongren city on Monday despite all emergency treatment, according to Guizhou Daily.

Wu firstly drew public attention with her unusual body size. She was reportedly 135 centimeters tall and weighed 21.6 kilograms, and looked extremely small and thin in appearance.

While feeling sorry for the woman's passing, Chinese readers are infuriated by some Western media sites including CNN and BBC, which absurdly related Wu's death to China's wealth gap to attack its ongoing poverty alleviation campaign.

A target to smear China

With Wu's case, Western media are using China's nationwide poverty alleviation campaign as a target to smear China.

BBC mentioned that Wu and her brother were supported by an uncle and aunt who could only provide 300 yuan ($43.6) each month.

The story claimed Wu had little money to buy herself food because most of the 300 yuan "went on the medical bills of her younger brother," which ran totally contrary to the fact.

Wu had clarified in person that medical insurance covers her brother's bills. "He gets treatment at no cost," she said in a CCTV interview in December 2019.

Wu also denied the "300 yuan" claim. "(I get) definitely more than that," she told CCTV.

"They make use of Wu's death and distort this single case as a symbol of 'failure' in China's poverty relief," Yang Lixiong, vice director of the Social Security Research Center at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times Thursday.

Guizhou village officer Peng Pai told media that Wu and her brother, being classified as impoverished, had been enjoying a monthly subsistence allowance since 2009 apart from free education and social medical insurance. The allowance was increasing over time and has reached 730 yuan.

 



Moreover, Wu's brother confirmed to CCTV that the government offered them a decorated 60-square-meter house in Tongren in 2018.

Wu was also helped at her college. Since entering the college in September 2017, Wu had got 43,650 yuan of student aid grants from the government and the college, as well as 17,000 yuan of donations from the teaching staff, the college published on its official WeChat account.

Wu and her brother had received 20,000-yuan emergency relief fund provided by their local civil affairs bureau in 2019, the bureau told media in October.

All the financial, residential, educational, and healthcare support proves Wu was in the care of many at the end of her life, the Chinese public learned. "From the government to her college and teachers, they all gave her helping hands," a user Sevenliushuang wrote on Weibo.

But Western media neglected the implications of Wu's disease and the support she had gotten, falsely describing her as a young woman too poor to survive in China.

In a story reporting on Wu's death, CNN took advantage of the claim that China could "have done more to save the student" under its sensational headline "A student was too poor to buy enough food." Her death has raised poverty concerns in China.

Local government had actually guaranteed Wu all the basic subsidies and help, Yang said.

He condemned Western media's biased coverage of Wu. 

"It's inappropriate to blame the whole poverty relief system for Wu's death, which was caused by various elements including her congenital disease," he told the Global Times.

In 2019, people living in poverty in Yang's hometown Guizhou Province dropped to less than 1 percent from 33.4 percent in 2011, according to the website of the province's poverty alleviation and development office.

Students in a village school in Bouyei-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Qiannan, Southwest China's Guizhou Province receive donations from a Shanghai company. Photo: cnsphoto

In China, those whose net per capita income was less than 3,747 yuan were defined as people living in poverty in 2019. The amount will increase to 4,000 yuan by the end of 2020, according to chinagate.cn.

More than 700 million Chinese have cast off poverty over the past four decades, representing more than 70 percent of global poverty reduction, the Xinhua News Agency reported in 2019. As a major contributor to the world's poverty reduction endeavors, China vows to eradicate poverty by 2020.

Behind Wu's death

Wu grew up in a village of rural Guizhou with her younger brother, who was diagnosed with intermittent mental illness. Wu's mother died when she was 4 and her father died when she was 18.

Wu and her brother had received various help from the local government. 

Nonetheless, some Western media sites falsely claimed Wu died of poverty and hunger by simply quoting a few unreliable Chinese social media accounts saying she "only ate rice mixed with chili" or "she survived on just 2 yuan per day." 

The average cost of Wu's lunch and supper at college was respectively 6.19 yuan and 6.24 yuan, according to her canteen consumption record Guizhou Forerunner College showed to media. She sometimes ate night snacks as well, read the record.

Six yuan can buy a meal consisting of a meat dish, a vegetable dish and a bowl of rice at colleges in Guizhou, sophomore Li Yunyun told the Global Times, disproving Western media's misinformation.

Wu herself had actually denied the "2 yuan per day" rumor through a friend.

"Wu told me what she originally said to media was she only spent 1-2 yuan 'on a certain day,' but it was changed to 'every day' or 'almost every day' in their stories," Wu's friend Wu Yurong said in a CCTV interview in December 2019.

The BBC attributed Wu's death and her overly small body size to "eating minimal amounts of food" in a January 14 article. CNN claimed in the lead of its January 14 story that she was "too poor to afford adequate food."

Wu's situation has been proved much more complicated than their claims.

The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, where Wu had received treatment for months, announced Wu might have suffered from Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome HGPS, Guizhou Daily reported January 15.

HGPS is a congenital rare disease that is almost impossible to cure, said Zhang Hongtao, research associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Wu had been reportedly suffering the massive falling off of her hair and eyebrows, which was consistent with the symptom of HGPS rather than starvation or malnutrition, Zhang wrote in an article. Most HGPS patients die of cardiovascular-related diseases between the ages of 10 and 20 as their aging speed is 5-10 times faster than healthy people, Zhang said.

Therefore, money and support were "not enough to save Wu," he concluded.


Newspaper headline: Caring for disadvantaged


Posted in: SOCIETY,IN-DEPTH

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