The widow of Li Wenliang, the doctor punished for warning colleagues about the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, has criticised a proposal by US politicians to name a street in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington after her late husband. Fu Xuejie wrote on social media she did not want to see people sensationalising her husband’s case. Li, 34, was reprimanded by police for warning his colleagues about the then-unknown respiratory disease, which later killed him. “I am saddened after hearing the news … Wenliang was a Communist Party member, and he loved his motherland deeply. If he knew, he would not allow other people to use his name to hurt his motherland,” she wrote. Wuhan doctor who worked with whistle-blower Li Wenliang dies after contracting coronavirus on front line Li’s death in early February stirred up a national outpouring of grief and anger at the government. But Beijing quickly moved to portray him as a national hero and sent a team to investigate his death. It also censored posts calling for freedom of speech and apology from the government, and instead spun the narrative to honour the martyrdom of a Communist Party member. Fu has not made any public appearances since the death of her husband. Saturday’s comment was her second post on the Weibo account registered on February 7. Her first post, made a day after she set up the account, was a rebuttal of internet rumours that she was asking for donations to support her family. Change Chinese embassy’s US address to honour coronavirus whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang, Republicans say The second post by Fu on Saturday attracted widespread attention on the Twitter-like platform – posts using the hashtag “statement issued by Li Wenliang’s wife” attracted 120 million views – and it was also widely reported by mainland media outlets. Earlier this month Republicans in the US House of Representatives and Senate introduced a bill rename the street outside the Chinese embassy. If enacted, the official address of the Chinese embassy in Washington’s leafy northwest would be changed from 3505 International Place to 1 Li Wenliang Plaza. In 2014, US lawmakers lobbied the city government to name the street outside the diplomatic outpost after Liu Xiaobo, the prominent Chinese human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Back then the Chinese embassy protested the campaign, telling The Washington Post that Liu had “violated Chinese laws” and arguing that the US public would “not like to see a US street be named after a criminal”.