SinoInsight 1
On Feb. 18, PRC state media outlets reported that as many as 40 mobile incinerators (so-called “waste and animal carcass cabins,” or 垃圾和動物尸體處置方艙) have been sent to Wuhan to support epidemic prevention and control work. State media outlets claim that each mobile incinerator can “burn five tons of medical waste in a harmless manner” every day.
On Feb. 19, Shanghai official media Xinmin Weekly spotlighted some information from the 25th official document of 2020 issued by the Wuhan Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters: The Wuhan local government plans to increase its total number of reserve hospital beds to 100,000 by Feb. 20, with 14,000 beds located in designated coronavirus hospitals, 30,000 beds located in so-called “cabin hospitals” (方艙醫院), and 56,000 beds located in “centralized quarantine points” (集中隔離點).
On Feb. 21, Hu Yabo, a standing committee member of the Wuhan Party committee and Wuhan’s executive deputy mayor, said that an additional 19 cabin hospitals will be constructed in the city and that Wuhan’s cabin hospital bed reserves will reach 30,000. Hu added that there are presently 13 cabin hospitals with 13,348 beds in Wuhan, with 9,313 beds currently occupied.
Also on Feb. 21, Han Zheng, a Politburo Standing Committee member and PRC State Council vice premier, delivered remarks at the Ministry of Public Security’s national teleconference on restoring transportation. In his remarks, Han called on Hubei Province to “strictly prevent the export of the epidemic” and “cut off epidemic transmission channels.”
During a Politburo meeting on Feb. 21, PRC leader Xi Jinping said that “a turning point in the development of the national epidemic situation has not yet arrived” and that the “epidemic prevention and control situation in Hubei province and Wuhan city remains severe and complex.”
According to official CCP data on the COVID-19 coronavirus on Feb. 23, there were 630 new confirmed cases (541 in Wuhan) of the coronavirus in Hubei Province and 96 new deaths (82 in Wuhan) on Feb. 22. As of Feb. 22, there are a total of 46,439 confirmed cases in Hubei (36,174 in Wuhan), according to official CCP figures.
OUR TAKE
1. Going by the various official figures shown above, it seems that the PRC has sent an excess of mobile incinerators to Wuhan to support local epidemic prevention and control operations based on the current number of infected persons in the city.
The 40 mobile incinerators that the central government dispatched to Wuhan can process a total of 200 tons of “waste and animal carcasses” each day. Two hundred tons is roughly the weight of medical waste produced by 100,000 beds worth of patients if we double the regular amount of waste that a patient is expected to produce a day (official PRC reports estimate that a patient produces 1 kilogram of medical waste per day; in considering the severity of the epidemic, we can reasonably expect more medical waste to be produced per patient). Interestingly enough, the Wuhan local government had plans to increase the total number of reserve hospital beds in the city to 100,000 by Feb. 20.
Sending 40 mobile incinerators to Wuhan, however, is somewhat of an overkill given that there are officially only 36,174 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan and official figures have been showing a decline in the number of cases in recent days. Even if we consider that each patient produces the officially estimated 1 kilogram worth of medical waste (this figure is bound to be much smaller because patients in quarantine facilities likely produce less waste as compared to patients in hospital wards), then 20 mobile incinerators should be more than enough to process the medical waste of all the infected patients in Wuhan.
2. We see two plausible explanations for why Wuhan was sent twice as many mobile incinerators than it would require.
First, the CCP knows that the epidemic situation in Wuhan is far worse than what the official figures let on. Various signs indicate that such is the case, including Xi Jinping’s remarks about the “turning point” in the epidemic having “not yet arrived,” Han Zheng’s remarks about “strictly preventing the export of the epidemic” from Wuhan, and the Wuhan local government’s plan to add more hospital beds. Presuming that the epidemic is very severe in Wuhan, then it is possible that the city is producing so much medical waste that it requires at least 40 mobile incinerators to keep up with the epidemic prevention and control work.
Second, and more sinisterly, the mobile incinerators were sent to Wuhan not just to process “animal carcasses,” but human corpses as well. We previously noted that funeral homes in Wuhan have been operating 24 hours a day since the outbreak of the coronavirus while hospital staff have told an overseas Chinese language news outlet that more than a hundred people die every day at their hospital. Official statements and reports have since obliquely affirmed that Wuhan’s funeral homes have been severely strained during the epidemic. A Jan. 25 local government statement informed Wuhan residents that funeral homes would start providing three services, “removal of remains, cremation, and storage of ashes,” round-the-clock. In early February, official media reported that “funeral service teams” from various parts of China have been sent to Wuhan to support local efforts.
In a scenario where half of the 40 mobile incinerators in Wuhan are used for corpse cremation, and in assuming an average weight of 80 kilograms per corpse, then the city now has the capacity to cremate an additional 1,250 corpses per day. This figure is nearly double the 700 corpses per day being cremated by funeral homes that we conservatively estimated in our Jan. 30 analysis.
3. In our China 2019 outlook, we predicted that the PRC will only divulge more information about a disease outbreak when the situation becomes “too problematic to cover up.”
In our China 2020 outlook, we wrote that “we do not rule out the possibility that the PRC will use unethical means to contain the spread of the diseases and eliminate the epidemics.”
From the increase of mobile incinerators in Wuhan, the local government’s plan to increase the number of reserve hospital beds in the city, and PRC vice premier Han Zheng’s remarks on preventing the spread of COVID-19 from Wuhan, it seems that the CCP is ready to sacrifice Wuhan, and even Hubei Province, to safeguard other parts of the mainland and the communist regime. Based on our understanding of the CCP, we have reason to suspect that the CCP plans to “cap” the number of confirmed cases in Wuhan to 100,000 patients/beds and use unethical means to deal with the “excess” patients; unethical means could involve forcing infected persons to self-quarantine at designated centers before sending seriously ill but still alive “commoners” (i.e. not officials or wealthy people) to the cremation furnaces, and finding ways to ensure a brisk hospital bed turnover rate to give the impression that the epidemic situation is improving.
SinoInsight 2
On Feb. 19, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said in a weekly analysis article on its official website that passenger car sales plummeted 92 percent from a year ago between Feb. 1 to Feb. 16.
OUR TAKE
1. Car sales are an important indicator of consumption power in China. From CPCA’s figures, it is clear that the Wuhan epidemic had hit car sales (which have already been declining for some time) hard, and could not have come at a worst time (consumer spending usually goes up during the Spring Festival period).
2. According to CPCA data, car sales fell 21 percent from a year ago in January 2020. Between Jan. 19 to Jan. 31, car sales (38,611 vehicles sold) fell by nearly 50 percent year-on-year; on Jan. 20, the PRC government officially acknowledged the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
CPCA figures show that car sales actually went up between Jan. 1 to Jan. 18 (135,847 vehicles sold, or a 10.8 percent increase YoY). Between Jan. 13 to Jan. 18, car sales increased 31 percent (86,372) from the previous year, showing good momentum.
2. The auto industry is an important pillar of China’s manufacturing industry. In 2019, the labor-intensive auto industry brought in 8 trillion yuan, or 8 percent of the national GDP.
The Wuhan epidemic has already severely impacted consumption in China. As people travel less, the demand for cars will decrease, and car sales will likewise fall. Car sales will also be badly affected by declining consumption power in China as people’s livelihood are affected by the coronavirus outbreak and the ongoing Sino-U.S. trade war. China’s current economic conditions mean that it will be difficult for car sales to recover even after the epidemic has passed.
It is unclear when the CCP regime can bring the epidemic under control. And the longer the epidemic lingers (or worsens), the greater of an impact it will have on upstream, downstream, and global auto supply chains. China’s auto industry could potentially be dealt a “death blow” when international auto industry giants start to move part of their production capacity out of China.
