It is important at this difficult time for Wuhan to remember that this City is a Sister City for Christchurch. When we had our challenges with earthquakes our Sister City stood by our side. I reflect that it does worry me how the Chinese authorities tried to hide the truth about the virus. The leaders of the City appear to have been “replaced”, which is how authoritarian regimes operate. Ignore the fact that the first instinct was to cover things up and instead blame those who led the regime which made these calls. Nothing will change, which is a tragedy. This article in the Guardian yesterday summarised things pretty well https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/15/xi-critic-professor-this-may-be-last-piece-i-write-words-ring-true.
However, I visited Wuhan 4 times as Mayor. We have many friends there and the relationship is a strong one. One man, Eugene Feng, played a major role in this relationship right up until when he died last year. We need to hold hands with our Wuhan brothers and sisters in their hour of need. I would be very interested in the media investigating what support we have offered them in their hour of need. Sister City relationships are there for good times and bad. For Wuhan this is a bad time and they need us alongside them.
Here is a balance to what I wrote in the first paragraph. This guy was saying how he felt when he self-produced this
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