Last weekend, Jiang Yanyong died of pneumonia at the age of 91. In 2003, Jiang Yanyong revealed the full, initially secret, extent of the lung disease Sars, thereby preventing this coronavirus from spreading in the way Covid does today.

Jochen Stahnke

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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As chief physician of the People's Liberation Army, Jiang witnessed the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre at a Beijing military hospital, where he operated on students who had previously demonstrated for freedom and were then shot by soldiers. Years later, Jiang continued to report and demand a reappraisal, which earned him house arrest several times.

According to the South China Morning Post, Jiang tested positive for Covid in January. It is unclear whether his death is directly related to this.

Jiang died in the People's Liberation Army hospital where he worked for decades. According to agency reports, his death and name were censored on social media.

Opposition to the Minister of Health

Jiang drew the Communist Party's anger in the spring of 2003 when he contradicted his own health minister after the Sars outbreak, who had initially announced that the disease was under control and that only a dozen people fell ill. Jiang himself had noticed that a multiple number of people had long been treated for Sars. In his military hospital alone, there were already more than a hundred Sars patients at the time.

He first informed Chinese media, which ignored him, and then American media in a letter. The international reports led to a rapid response from the World Health Organization, after which the Chinese authorities eventually stepped up their countermeasures.

Ultimately, less than a thousand people died from the Sars virus. China's health minister and the mayor of Beijing had to resign.

A few months later, he again criticized the authorities on one of the most sensitive issues. Jiang demanded that the Communist Party recognize the bloody crackdown on the 1989 student protests as a mistake and admit that thousands of civilians were likely killed by tanks and bullets.

As a result, he had to spend weeks in detention. According to reports, Jiang wrote a letter to today's party and state leader Xi Jinping in 2019 that the Tiananmen massacre was a "crime". Jiang Yanyong continued to live under house arrest that year.

According to the South China Morning Post, he always stated that he was a loyal member of the Communist Party. Jiang is survived by his wife, daughter, and son.