Sick Statistics of Asia

Chinese Coronavirus Figures Are Not Reliable
China reports that Chinese virus cases are declining, but the data are surely tied to party propaganda.
BY JAMES PALMER

Members of a neighborhood committee wear protective masks as they control the entrance to a narrow street on Feb. 19 in Beijing. 

Pathological Lying: China Reports Decline in Virus Cases
In China, the death toll from the Chinese coronavirus has now topped 2,000, with over 70,000 cases confirmed. 

But if you follow Chinese state media, the tone is increasingly optimistic: Victory in the people’s war against the virus, led by President Xi Jinping, is coming! 

The official figures seem to bear this out: New infections outside of Hubei province, the Chinese virus epicenter, have dropped for more than 10 days straight, and the number of new cases inside Hubei has slowed to under 2,000 per day.


Most of Hubei remains under lockdown, with residents unable to leave their homes without special permission. 

Travel restrictions of varying severity have been imposed across China, from monitored movement to total quarantine. 

Taken at face value, the government’s containment strategy appears to be working. 

But that raises the question: How reliable are China’s official numbers?

Party politics. 

One suspicious element is how consistent the drop in new virus cases has been. 

While there was a jump in numbers last Thursday, it was the result of changes in testing standards in Hubei—moving nearly 15,000 cases from “suspected” to “confirmed.” 

The announcement came as Hubei’s top officials were removed from their jobs—and Xi’s close ally Ying Yong, the former mayor of Shanghai, installed as the province’s party boss. 

As often happens, the new boss wanted to blame the bad news on the old one.
Meanwhile, the central government is pushing for reopening businesses, but there is a conflict emerging. 

Local officials don’t want to be scapegoated if an outbreak emerges in their domain, and their fear is outweighing the economic damage of the virus. 

But there are reports from Zhejiang and Guangdong of lockdowns being lifted, with a monitored surveillance system that allows people to leave the house in areas previously under heavy restrictions.

Downward trend. 

The straight decline in new cases of the virus could be good news, or it could be statistical manipulation. 

Outside of Hubei, diagnostic test kits are in short supply, and other provinces haven’t switched to using the symptomatic diagnosis now accepted in Hubei. 

The kits are only being used to test people who came from Hubei and not for cases of transmission, so it’s unsurprising the numbers are dropping. 

Chinese doctors report that dozens of other hospital patients are being quarantined and treated but not officially diagnosed.

U.S.-China media wars. 

The United States made a strong move against China yesterday, reclassifying five state-run media outlets—Xinhua News Agency, the China Global Television Network, China Daily, China Radio, and People’s Daily—as operatives of Beijing. 

The designation makes their operations inside the United States subject to tighter control. 

Chinese reporters at home and abroad have always been tasked with producing neican—internal reports for the party—and effectively used for espionage on an ad hoc basis.
, the outlets’ reporters could be subject to the same travel restrictions the United States has imposed on Chinese diplomats. 

In China, Western reporters already face a system of monitoring and control that limits their visas, sees them harassed by police, and prevents them from living outside certain cities.
The U.S. move prompted immediate retaliation from Beijing, which expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters on Wednesday. (The excuse was an opinion headline that described China as “the real sick man of Asia,” a phrase that prompted state-backed outrage from the Chinese.) 

Notably, all of the expelled reporters were of Chinese descent, part of a pattern of China treating nonwhite foreign reporters—and especially those with Chinese ancestry—with more suspicion.

Missing coronavirus cases

While most of China’s southern and eastern neighbors have reported coronavirus cases, the countries along its northern border such as Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan have seen minimal numbers, with Russia only just reporting its first two cases. 

The pattern of cases may just represent the direction of travel before the Lunar New Year holiday at the start of the outbreak: Migrant workers would be returning to China from the north, while middle-class vacationers headed south.

What about North Korea? 

Meanwhile, North Korea says it doesn’t have any coronavirus cases, but the country has gone under total lockdown and cut off all transport ties to the outside world. 

North Korean state media, meanwhile, has broadcasted information about hygiene methods and protective masks. 

If the nation was suffering an outbreak, would we know?

Restaurant crisis. 

The restaurant business has been devastated by the coronavirus outbreak, despite the hardworking delivery people doing their best to keep the sector alive. 

The loss of Lunar New Year business and the closure of public spaces has devastated an industry already teetering on the edge. 

In Beijing, which is not fully locked down, only 13 percent of restaurants have stayed open throughout the outbreak. 

Jim Boyce, a longtime food and wine correspondent, has written about how badly the global wine trade will be hit. 

Back to work? 

The government is trying to encourage people to return to work, but between travel restrictions and local lockdowns it is proving effectively impossible. 

In China’s north, factory owners say they are still paying above-average wages to get staff and that the vast majority of workers still haven’t returned to the job. 

Companies that can are allowing remote work. 

Chinese schools, which look unlikely to reopen before April, have switched to online classes.

Pension burden. 

With business hurting from both the shutdowns and the government-mandated requirement to keep paying employees, 

Chinese authorities have announced that companies won’t have to pay some pension contributions and insurance fees to state-run funds for several months. 

That’s a smart move, but it raises the threat of the oncoming pension crisis.

A Moment in History: The Asian flu, 1957 and 1968The first post-World War II pandemic—the result of the mixing of avian and human influenza strains—was first detected in Singapore in 1957 but may have originated in China. 

While less lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu, the “Asian flu” pandemic killed perhaps 1 million to 2 million people worldwide. 

A decade later, it mutated into the “Hong Kong” flu: Again, it was first detected in the British colony but possibly originated in China.
Maoist China had high levels of deforestation and food insecurity, which caused people to eat previously untouched species, as well as a dire lack of medical resources. 

It was perhaps only the country’s isolation and limited freedom of movement that prevented outbreaks on the scale of SARS in 2003 or the 2020 coronavirus outbreak. 

It’s also possible that such outbreaks did occur and went unnoticed among the deaths of the era.

Pathological lying: China is covering up spread of Wuhan virus

World watches to see if country has learned painful lessons from Sars outbreak as one former World Health Organisation official accuses Chinese officials of ‘lying from the start’ of the outbreak
By William Zheng and Mimi Lau

Experts have questioned whether Chinese officials have tried to cover up the full extent of the outbreak. 

As medical practitioners race against time to contain the spread of the new coronavirus from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the country’s leaders have a second battle to fight – defending its credibility in the face of widespread scepticism about its commitment to transparency.
The outbreak, which had infected more than 400 people across China and around half a dozen overseas by Tuesday evening, apparently originated from a seafood market.
So far, at least nine people in Wuhan have died because of the virus.
It is believed to be less contagious than severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed more than 700 people worldwide.
But China’s poor handling of that outbreak in 2002 and 2003 – which was marked by cover-ups and an official reluctance to share information – has prompted sceptics to ask whether Beijing would again put politics ahead of protecting public health.

Health officials fear Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is larger than China’s letting on

Peter Cordingley, who was the spokesman for World Health Organisation during the Sars crisis, was one of those who raised the alarm on social media on Tuesday accusing Beijing of “lying about the spread of the Wuhan flu virus from the start”.
“I say this because I was the WHO spokesman in Asia at the time of the 2003 Sars outbreak, and I’m seeing precisely the same reckless behaviour now,” he wrote.
Aware of the widespread scepticism it faces, Beijing has moved fast to assure the international community and the public that it will not tolerate any cover up or withholding of sensitive information about the outbreak.
On Tuesday the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission – Beijing’s top political body responsible for law and order – ran a social media commentary telling Communist Party officials not to forget the painful lessons of Sars and to ensure timely reporting of the current situation.

The virus has affected more than 400 people and killed nine.

“Anyone who puts the face of politicians before the interests of the people will be the sinner of a millennium to the party and the people,” the commentary on its Chang An Jian account read.
The commentary cited an instruction issued by Xi Jinping on Monday that the virus must be “resolutely contained”.
In an online commentary, Hu Xijin, editor of Global Times, a tabloid affiliate of People’s Daily, criticised the Wuhan municipal government for its sluggish response to the crisis.
Hu even questioned if the Wuhan authorities would have been willing to take the responsibility for confirming the probable human-to-human transmission of the virus had it not been revealed by Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s experts on respiratory diseases, on Monday.
Wu Qiang, a Beijing-based political analyst and former Tsinghua University professor, said Wuhan’s slow response may have been due to an ingrained culture among Communist Party cadres who were not prepared to act on their own.
“All these campaigns that have been launched one after another since Xi Jinping came to power seven years ago have robbed cadres of the motivation to take the initiative and they have become accustomed to hiding behind the shadow of the strong man,” Wu said.
He added that Beijing’s tight control over free speech and intellectuals has also created a stifled environment discouraging experts to speak out during a public health crisis.
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said local officials were apprehensive about taking sensible preventive measures without knowing what Xi and other top leaders wanted as they feared that any missteps would have serious political consequences.
“Who would dare to take on this responsibility without knowing whatever action to be taken would enjoy Xi’s blessings? So, I can’t say I was surprised by the basically passive responses until Xi came out ordering a robust response,” Tsang said.
“All important and sensitive issues will have to be decided by the top Chinese leader,” he said.
Professor Gabriel Leung, founding director of the University of Hong Kong’s WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, said on Tuesday that politics should not be a factor in cases such as this.
“Science and epidemic control should not be linked with politics,” Leung said.
“If any places linked epidemic control measures... with other considerations including politics, there would definitely be a problem.”