KATHMANDU: The number of Covid-positive dead arriving at Beijing’s funeral parlours and crematoria is rising, claims The Straits Times on 18 December 2022, despite China not having reported a fatality from the virus in the last couple of weeks.
Officially, China hasn’t recorded a death since 4 December 2022, when two were lodged. This has happened after officials abruptly abandoned the strict restrictions that have apparently kept the Covid virus at bay for a couple of years now.
Reuters reported that funeral homes in Beijing were overwhelmed due to the pandemic. Staff at a Beijing crematorium told the Financial Times they cremated the bodies of at least 30 Covid-19 victims on 14 December 2022. So, what is the truth behind China’s covid situation?
It is difficult to tell given the lack of accurate information, however it does seem that a pandora’s box has opened with the loosening of restrictions and that the virus may have in fact affected the whole of China!
The lack of any reported deaths since the curbs were lifted raises questions.Social media platforms such as Weibo query on whether fatalities in places like Beijing had increased and complaining about long queues at funeral homes.
Reports of long lines and stacks of urns at Wuhan’s funeral homes fuelled speculation the country was obscuring the true number of dead. China has reported just 5,235 Covid-19 deaths since the pandemic started in late 2019, with the first known cases in the central city of Wuhan.
The official Covid-19 death toll was revised up by some 1,290 fatalities in April 2020, boosting the tally in one go by 40 per cent. Predictions based on modelling by the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation show that fatalities could top 1 million through 2023.
The other consequence of the pandemic surging as China opens is that it could disrupt global supply chains, with waves of absenteeism expected. Companies from Volkswagen to oil-refining giant Sinopec are preparing for significant outbreaks.
In mid-December 2022, China halted reporting of asymptomatic cases, which typically made up the bulk of the infection tally. Even before that move, the dismantling of the country’s PCR testing apparatus and increased used of rapid antigen kits meant official data was virtually meaningless.
Yet deaths are much less likely to go under the radar than cases.The last official Covid-19 fatality reported for Beijing, was recorded on 23 November 2022; an 87-year-old woman who authorities said had chronic heart disease. The Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Home cremated 150 bodies, 30 or 40 with Covid-19, the Financial Times reported. Dongjiao and another funeral home were designated by Beijing Health Authorities to cremate those who die after testing positive. People outside Dongjiao said that at least two of the dead cremated there died testing positive.
The system of lockdowns, mass testing and mandatory isolation emerged out of that crisis, and enabled China to go long stretches of the pandemic virtually virus-free or that’s what China wanted the world to believe. Xi Jinping closely aligned his zero-covid policy with his rule, which he showcased as China’s superiority over the West.
Since 2020, China had slapped partial and full lockdowns in several cities and provinces to stamp out the coronavirus. Chinese authorities argue that lockdown measures have saved lives, and to this regard they point towards low pandemic-related deaths in the country where a total 15,986 people succumbed to infections in comparison to 6.6 million worldwide.
Ironically, local authorities impose strict lockdowns even if only a few Covid cases are found; mass testing is carried out in places where cases have been reported; people afflicted with virus are isolated at home, or placed under quarantine at government facilities; factories, businesses, educational institutions are closed in lockdown areas; lockdowns last until no new infections are reported.
According to Japanese investment bank Nomura, as of the end of November, about 412 million people in China, were in lockdown. That means almost a third of China’s total population spent their working time at homes due to lockdown. Due to lockdown, people struggled to get access to food and emergency healthcare in cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan where authorities doubled down their efforts to curb Covid spread by sealing up buildings and locking down areas.
According to the South China Morning Post, in Shanghai and other cities, “people died while waiting for the nucleic acid test results they needed before they could receive medical treatment for diseases unrelated to the pandemic.” Covid curbs have proved to be harsh and mindlessly awkward for school going children.
For instance, during Shanghai’s lockdown, several school children were barred from returning home; even 15-year-old boys had to isolate themselves at hotels. They had to cook for themselves and did not have people to talk to.
The consequences of these steps are apparent from a study published in the US Journal Current Psychology, which states that around 20 per cent of Chinese junior and senior high school students during lockdowns experienced suicidal ideation.
Similarly, a Fudan University survey of around 4,500 young people conducted earlier this year showed that some 70 per cent students expressed varying degrees of anxiety. Lancet, the reputed British journal has in an editorial stated that “China’s lockdowns have had a huge human cost with the shadow of mental-ill health adversely affecting China’s culture and economy for years to come.”
This is a consequence of millions of Chinese nationals have been confined for a protracted period because of restrictions under zero-Covid policy, being followed in letter and spirit by Chinese authorities. The Economist estimates that suicides in Wuhan the city where the virus was first identified, were 79 per cent higher in the first quarter of 2020, when it was under lockdown than in the same period a year earlier.
It stated that a survey found more than 40 per cent people were at risk of depression in Shanghai after lockdown was imposed in the financial hub of China in April 2022.
All this appears to have changed after protests across China led the authorities to reverse course on a policy that had been holding back China’s economic growth. Online criticism of China’s handling of the pandemic has been the most significant aspect of the current situation.
This has happened despite China using censorship for years to monitor and remove social media content that contradicts the rigid state media narrative. Recently, WeChat users saw sharp criticisms of the nation’s handling of the pandemic.
One such post from late November 2022 had a list of six requests that included, but went well beyond, substituting “professional medical research-based solutions” for “unreasonable and unlawful zero-case regulations.” It also demanded an apology for the fire victims in Urumqi, Xinjiang, who were primarily Uyghur and are said to have perished due to the rigid lockdown that prevented them from both fleeing and firefighters from getting close enough to save them.
The fact that those posts remained on the WeChat Moments page for days in late November and early December—some of which are still there today—was even more surprising than the posts themselves.
The current groundswell of protests on the streets of China go way beyond the outrage on Chinese social media platforms, such as WeChat Moments and Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok).Along with the deaths in Guiyang and Urumqi, Dou expresses her outrage at how prolonged lockdowns and other restrictions have led to “an increasing number of people (are) choosing suicide because they are unable to support themselves financially and maintain their lives”.
Social media posts like Dou’s “tapped into a broad sense of discontent across numerous locations.” Social media enabled the protests to embrace similar themes and concerns as the Xinjiang fire served as the impetus for supportive rallies in other places.
The fact that they were posted is more surprising than the contents. China is thus on the cusp of another silent revolution, this time the people seemed to have decided to take fate into their hands, with little State support. A new crisis is brewing which may well shake the very foundations of the Communist Party of China!
