SinoInsight 1
As international COVID-19 cases swell and China’s infection curve seems to have flattened, the CCP is beginning to lift lockdowns and push people back to work. Also, with the rise of imported coronavirus cases, the CCP has started warning about a second wave of infections on the horizon.
On March 24, Wuhan’s government announced that the city lockdown will be lifted on April 8; just last week, however, people were allowed to enter, but not leave, the city, according to video footage circulating on Chinese social media. The Ezhou government also announced an end to coronavirus curfew and restrictions, as well as the removal of “emergency surveillance devices” and surveillance equipment that “interfere with normal daily life.” Meanwhile, the Hubei provincial government lifted the lockdown for areas outside of Wuhan on March 25.
The pressure to lift lockdowns appears to be an economic one. On March 23, Hou Anyang, the chairman of the Shenzhen-based Frontsea Asset Management, posted on his verified Weibo account, that “Guaranteeing employment comes first, and Dongguan massage establishments must also resume operations.”
Returning everyone to work quickly, however, comes with risk of re-infection. On March 12th, a PRC official declared that the “peak” of the coronavirus has passed. From March 18 to March 22, the PRC reported zero new cases of the coronavirus in Wuhan and Hubei. The PRC’s claims, however, have been disputed by accounts on social media and in the overseas Chinese language press. For instance, a March 23 report by Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK presented testimonies from local Wuhan residents being denied testing and turned away from hospitals, a “political treatment” which helps the PRC produce its desired official data on the coronavirus.
Officially, CCP data shows declining domestic cases and rising imported cases since the PRC announced that the “peak” of coronavirus infections had passed on March 12. The number of newly imported cases has risen from single digits on March 14 to double digits (67) on March 25. As of March 23, imported cases in China totaled 541.
Global Times, a nationalistic Party media, reported on March 23 that despite “domestic transmission being tamed” a “second wave of novel coronavirus outbreak highly likely, even inevitable.” The article includes views from Chinese experts, including top PRC epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan who said that the rise of imported cases “suggests that other countries are not paying deserved attention to the pandemic.” Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist from Wuhan University, also told Global Times that “if imported infections are not handled properly, or if certain cities adopted lax regulations on international travelers’ entry, these factors combined may give rise to localized infections in some cities.”
The CCP has also recently been actively spreading disinformation about COVID-19’s origins (blaming the U.S., Italy, Turkey, etc.) through its propaganda apparatus and diplomats.
OUR TAKE
1. We have noted in previous editions of this newsletter that it does not seem like the CCP has gotten the coronavirus under control. The CCP, however, is eager to get people working again to avoid potentially regime-ending economic trouble.
The last time the CCP faced the threat of regime-ending economic trouble was during the post-Cultural Revolution period. To rebuild the economy and the Party’s political legitimacy, Deng Xiaoping introduced a “reform and opening up” policy in 1978, allowing the CCP regime to get back on its feet a decade later and avert a regime-ending crisis.
Xi and the CCP arguably face more severe economic troubles today:
- The Chinese economy has been steadily worsening since 2008;
- China’s foreign exchange reserves have been fluctuating downward since June 2014;
- The CCP regime owes trillions in internal and external debt, and needs economic growth to finance those debts. Per the People’s Bank of China data, China’s external debt totaled $2.03 trillion in September 2019, of which $1.16 trillion are short-term debt;
- Because China is very interconnected with the world economy, prolonged economic problems in China will bring the CCP regime massive internal and external pressures. Should the Chinese economy grossly underperform, the regime will run into very serious trouble.
- China’s deep interconnectedness with the world means that the CCP regime cannot conveniently “disappear” its external problems by turning China into a “close” or “semi-closed” country (閉關鎖國), unlike during the Mao era.
2. Economics aside, the CCP needs to show China and the world that it has brought the epidemic under control so that it can convene the postponed Two Sessions and set economic work and policy agendas for the year.
We predicted in February that the CCP would hold the Two Sessions at the end of March or early April. Given the current circumstances, it is likely that the Two Sessions will be held in April, and even if the CCP still has doubts about the epidemic situation, no later than May.
3. It is not unusual for China to see a rise in imported cases, especially when CCP propaganda has been actively promoting the narrative of China as a coronavirus “safe haven.” The CCP, however, has already begun laying the groundwork to blame subsequent outbreaks on “imported cases” from other countries, particularly those countries whom it claims was where COVID-19 originated from. In shifting blame to other countries and external factors, the CCP is looking to deflect attention away from the possibility that its own epidemic prevention and control measures (lifting lockdowns prematurely, rushing people back to work, etc.) was the main cause of subsequent outbreaks and re-infections, as well as get people to “forget” the “CCP virus” originated from China.
SinoInsight 2
On March 26, semi-official mainland news outlet The Paper published a story on the return of ashes to relatives of the deceased by Wuchang Funeral House in Wuhan City. Wuchang Funeral House staff said that they had returned 100 boxes of ashes per day from March 23 to March 24, and “strived” to return 500 boxes of ashes per day starting from March 25, with the hope that all ashes could be handed out before the Qingming Festival (April 5). Many of the families collecting ashes were accompanied by members of local district neighborhood committees. The article was subsequently deleted from The Paper’s site.
According to official PRC data, there were 2,531 coronavirus deaths in Wuhan as of March 25.
OUR TAKE
1. The information in the now-deleted report in The Paper that we mentioned above challenges the official PRC data concerning the number of coronavirus deaths in Wuhan.
If we take the information in The Paper’s article at face value, then Wuchang Funeral House had 6,200 boxes of ashes to return before the Qingming Festival (200 boxes were handled out from March 23 to March 24; 6,000 boxes would be returned from March 25 to April 5 presuming a constant return rate of 500 boxes per day). According to publicly available information, there are seven funeral homes in Wuhan operating 79 cremation furnaces, 18 of which are located at Wuchang Funeral House. If we take the boxes of ashes that Wuchang Funeral House has as a percentage of the total (22.8 percent), then the funeral houses in Wuhan could possess as many as 27,192 boxes of ashes, with one box of ash corresponding to one person.
Given that Wuhan was placed under lockdown after the CCP acknowledged the coronavirus outbreak, it is likely that the bulk of the ashes being released now by Wuchang Funeral House are from those who died after Jan. 23. The 27,192 boxes of ashes does not capture all the deaths in Wuhan over the past two months, as some families could have retrieved their ashes earlier, or other funeral houses in Wuhan could have cremated more or less bodies than the Wuchang Funeral House did. That being said, it is likely that most of those who died after Jan. 23 died from either the “CCP virus” or from lack of medical attention due to hospitals being overwhelmed by the coronavirus epidemic.
In the Jan. 30 edition of this newsletter, we estimated that the actual coronavirus death rate could be at least 35 times higher than what the PRC had officially announced at the time. A notice by Wuhan’s Bureau of Civil Affairs also noted that funeral homes in Wuhan were operating their crematoriums for 24 hours a day, and only provided services for the “delivery of remains, cremation of remains, and the storage of ashes.”
2. Recent videos posted to Chinese social media show long lines outside Piandanshan Cemetery in Wuhan as people queue up to register the burial of their loved ones. Netizens comment that the lines outside the cemetery are longer than the lines for property sale lotteries, and that some families do not even have a queue number even after spending three hours in the queue.
