Chernobyl is striking a chord in China amid the coronavirus outbreak

Quartz

Numerous people in China have been using the HBO limited series to channel their anger with the Chinese government over the coronavirus outbreak. "A core theme of the show—which was based on the nuclear explosion that happened in 1986 in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union—was the ineptitude of the communist government in handling the disaster, particularly in the way that it tried to suppress information about the disaster," says Jane Li. "Some people in China, are drawing parallels with how Soviet authorities managed the nuclear disaster to how the Chinese government is handling the current coronavirus outbreak."