If Western reporters were thrown out of the country, ‘why’ might be a relevant follow-up question … right?
The official story about China having beat this bug is getting some serious pushback in the West.
This is, after all, a particularly thin-skinned despotic regime with a well-documented habit of silencing their critics.
They have outlawed Pooh Bear because he was mocked with memes, going back to this photo:
They insist on American citizens being fired from their US-based jobs for such serious ‘violations’ as ‘liking’ a tweet about Tibet.
Have the Communists party members running China ever officially admitted to the body count associated with Tiananmen Square? UK officials have put estimates as high as 10,000 victims.
When China had to close their borders to international travel and trade — and when they had foreign-based companies closing shop due to virus fears — China took a beating in the markets. That’s beside the international embarrassment they had for completely dropping the ball with this problem.
They have an incredibly strong monetary motivation to have the world believe that everything is back to normal — whether that’s true (which would be good news) or even if it isn’t. And as we have seen, the lives and rights of Chinese citizens are not particularly respected by the despotic government ruling over them.
So, you’ll have to excuse us if we’re not taking the Communist leaders’ official story about China being the first country to have ‘kicked’ this problem at face value.
There are a few red flags offering good clues why we should be slow to do so…
First: Western Journalists
China has ejected Western Journalists. While the media has often been quick to parrot Chinese propaganda, the lack of any direct editorial control on Western journalists makes it difficult to pump the brakes on any story embarrassing to the Chinese government.
That problem becomes far more manageable for China’s Communist Party leaders if they’ve been turfed from the country.
Second: Burial Urn Deliveries
Urns in Wuhan far exceed death toll, raising more questions about China’s tally
A single mortuary has had 5,000 urns delivered over the past two days, double the city’s reported coronavirus death tollThe reliability of China’s coronavirus numbers is under question once again in view of the staggering amount of urns being distributed out in Wuhan.
…One photo published by Caixin shows a truck loaded with 2,500 urns arriving at the Hankou Mortuary. The driver said that he had delivered the same amount to the mortuary the day before.
Another photo shows stacks of urns inside the mortuary. There were seven stacks with 500 urns in each stack, adding up to 3,500 urns.
Taken together with the new shipment, the number of urns on hand at the mortuary looks to be more than double Wuhan’s death toll.
Urns are reportedly being distributed at a rate of 500 a day at the mortuary until the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, which falls on April 4 this year.
Wuhan has seven other mortuaries. If they are all sticking to the same schedule, this adds up to more than 40,000 urns being distributed in the city over the next 10 days. — Source: Shanghaiist
Third: Cell Phone Statistics
There are a LOT fewer cellphone accounts now…
“The digitization level is very high in China. People can’t survive without a cell phone.”
Real death count in China? Over 21 million cell phone accounts in #China were canceled in the past 3 months — #CCPVirus deaths may have contributed to the number. https://t.co/GzNazZPQt7
— The Epoch Times – China Insider (@EpochTimesChina) March 22, 2020
Indeed, all cellphones are registered and connected to their user’s identity and are required for using everything from bank accounts to bus tickets and employment to shopping, among countless other day-to-day activities. Recently, the regime even linked health codes — red for infected, yellow for suspected infection and green for healthy — to every single mobile user as a means to help track the spread of the coronavirus.
Given the reported indispensable nature of mobile phones in Chinese society, consider a standard quarterly report released in mid-March by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that documents the number of active cellphone and landline accounts in the country over the past three months.
According to the MIIT report, as compared with the previous report released in November, the number of mobile phone accounts had declined by roughly 21.03 million, from about 1.6 billion to 1.57 billion. Over the same time, landline accounts decreased by about 840,000, from 190.83 million to 189.99 million.
During a similar period a year ago, however — December 2018 to February 2019 — mobile phone accounts had increased by about 24 million, from 1.55 billion to 1.58 billion. Likewise, landlines had increased over that time frame by about 6.6 million, from 183.4 million to 190.1 million. — Source: WesternJournal
Could there be an entirely innocent explanation? Of course!
But would that explanation be able to account for ALL the available information — including the Urns and the ejected journalists?
That would be some helpful information.
Could they just be pushing a narrative that they’ve beaten it with an eye to rebooting their country’s economic engine?
