Overwhelmed by the COVID, Xi Jinping and the CCP Shut Down China’s Largest Fake Statistics Bureau.
The gap between the lies of the CCP and the catastrophic reality of the current situation in China had become too obvious.
As the number of COVID-19 cases explodes in China, China's National Health Commission announced Sunday, Dec. 25, 2022, that it would no longer publish statistics on the number of cases and deaths related to the outbreak as it had since early 2020. “The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention will publish information related to the epidemic for reference and research purposes,” the commission explained.
The obvious discrepancy between the statistics and the reality of the epidemic situation may have become too glaring: it showed only six deaths from COVID-19 since December 7, 2022, while the epidemic has taken off again.
Many Chinese Internet users mocked the news: “It was the best and biggest fake statistics bureau in the country,” posted a user of Weibo, the Chinese Facebook, on Sunday.
The new calculation method, in force since the lifting of restrictions, is surprising. From now on, Chinese people have to perform self-tests at home, so many cases are not officially reported by the inhabitants. Moreover, only people who died of respiratory failure due to COVID-19 are counted.
An increasing number of cases
China lifted Xi Jinping's zero COVID policy on December 7, 2022, bringing smiles to local and international markets. Before that, people were still regularly confined and had to undergo PCR testing on a very regular basis, to isolate the sick and count the number of cases nationwide. However, economic hardship and discontent among the population overcame this policy.
Since the restrictions were lifted, the situation has deteriorated greatly. Chinese people are paying dearly for the mismanagement of the pandemic by Xi Jinping and the CCP.
Chinese hospitals are under pressure and drugs for fever and flu are in short supply. On top of that, the number of elderly people with a full vaccination schedule in the country is relatively low. But health authorities say they have accelerated the vaccination campaign, with 24 million doses administered between December 8 and 23, 2022. Except that it has already been established by Chinese scientists themselves that Chinese vaccines are not sufficiently effective, unlike the Western messenger RNA vaccines that Xi Jinping still refuses to import.
Some regional governments have begun to publicly address a situation that could get out of control. Some Western institutes estimate that one million people could die from COVID in China if restrictions are lifted. Authorities in Zhejiang, south of Shanghai, said on Sunday, December 25, 2022, that more than one million people in the province of 65 million are infected each day. In Qingdao, a city in the east of the country with a population of 10 million people, the authorities counted half a million cases daily.
Economic impact already visible
The deterioration of the epidemic situation soon had an impact on the economic health of the world's second-largest economy. Bloomberg reported a significant contraction in business activity in December, as people were tempted to stay home in the face of the risk of infection. The Chinese economy was already struggling before the restrictions were lifted in early December.
In Beijing, retail sales fell by 18% in November 2022. But this opening, which was supposed to be a condition for improving the country's activity, could have the opposite effect. Housing and car sales fell in the first few weeks of December, and factories are dealing with the absence of sick workers.
The Shanghai Composite Index had rallied on the announcement of the end of Xi Jinping's inflexible zero-COVID policy, but is now at half-mast, at its early November 2022 level. Since December 7, 2022, it has lost almost 5%.
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