Today, the official figures of the Chinese authorities relating to the deaths linked to Covid-19 are called into question. Is it possible that China is lying about it? We interviewed Thierry Kellner, political scientist specializing in China at the ULB, theFree University of Brussels. According to him, since the beginning of the epidemic which has turned into a pandemic, Chinese propaganda has been running at full speed. He also claims that China has made serious mistakes and is trying to hide them today by portraying an authoritarian regime that has managed containment well.
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There are many questions surrounding the number of Covid-19 deaths in China today. Are you asking questions too?
“The numbers in China have suddenly stopped progressing. One has the impression that these are more political figures than real figures, all the more that specialists wonder if all the people who died during this period were counted Chinese coronavirus or not. Chinese authorities may also have put them in other categories: heart problems and pneumonia. Then were people who died at home counted in the statistics or not? A series of questions were in the air and came back to the fore since the Chinese magazine Caixin carried out an investigation. It is one of the last credible media outlets in China which has made calculations which would tend to show that the number of victims is much higher. “
A little more than 2000 cases in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, doesn’t that seem credible to you?
“Wuhan, it’s 11 million people, it’s huge. For several weeks, the authorities let the virus develop. We weren’t really talking about it. The people who tried to denounce the situation were summoned by the police because they were allegedly spreading rumors. China has not taken enough precaution. In our countries, we can see how quickly the virus is spreading, so I think China has deceived the international community about the speed of transmission and the severity of symptoms. “
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China would not communicate the real figures? Is it possible in such a crisis?
“From the moment the Party decides that it has won the battle, it does everything to show that the battle is won. The Chinese regime is not really known for its transparency, and this in many sectors, all the more so when these are sensitive sectors, where problems can damage, on the one hand, the image of China outside and, on the other hand, the capacity and the legitimacy of the Party internally. to show that it has excellent results and therefore to present the best possible face. Under these conditions, obviously, we can think that everything that is not in agreement with the official version is hidden “.
China has launched a major propaganda campaign to try to confuse information about the origin of the virus.
Doesn’t this practice of hiding numbers surprise you?
“No, I’m not surprised at all. For example, in another area, thein China has been claiming for months that there is no problem in Xinjiang, that detention camps do not exist. She even claimed this before the United Nations authorities without shame, while the evidence accumulates, satellite photos and a whole series of elements which make that no specialist in the question doubts the existence of these camps. . However, Beijing claims that these camps do not exist. Similarly, China has launched a major propaganda campaign to try to confuse information about the origin of the virus. It’s an internally launched campaign to say that the virus was imported from outside and that the culprit is the United States. What is very surprising from our point of view is that this conspiracy theory not only circulates internally, but is also relayed by the highest Chinese authorities outside by the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by its ambassadors, etc. This shows that from a propaganda point of view, China has no hesitation in changing reality and spreading what we would call fake news if it can serve its interests. “
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We are also talking about the numerous telephone line outages, does this have to do with a higher number of deaths from coronavirus than announced?
“On this point, it is difficult to know if this is due to the death of the user or if it is the demonstration of an economic slowdown. You should know that in China, many people work in provinces which are not not the provinces where they originally lived. So it’s likely they had two cellphones. A large number of subscriptions were suspended, probably because people were confined to their homes and lost the utility of the second cell phone. It can also just show that there has been a major economic downturn. “
Officially, factories had been reopened, but in fact the electricity was put on to pretend that they were working, when there was no production in-house.
“What also made me doubt the veracity of the Chinese figures is that thousands of people left Wuhan before the confinement and left all over China. It would be surprising if this very large displacement was not a vector of contamination in the rest of China. However, the figures do not show an exponential growth of the virus. Is it because there was a rapid containment which made it possible to limit the virus, or is it because we tampered with the statistics? That’s an open question, but falsifying the statistics in China is something we know. the Caixin showed that factories had officially been reopened, but in fact we put the electricity to make believe that they worked, when there was no production in-house. The objective was to correspond to the speech official of a return to normal fast.
Links between China and WHO, the World Health Organization, are also problematic. Because the WHO figures depend on the figures given by the Chinese authorities. So these official WHO figures are from Chinese statistics.
It is important not to let the Chinese discourse on the pseudo-efficiency of an authoritarian model develop.
In addition, China is selling its authoritarian model as a working model, with the example of this containment which has worked well. Everyone forgets that there are examples of democracies where it has worked very well: South Korea and Taiwan, which is probably the most effective model developed in a Chinese environment. And this is a democracy. So it is important not to let the Chinese discourse on the pseudo-efficiency of an authoritarian model develop. The media take this without a critical look or with a look that is not critical enough. We have to be more careful because this is part of a propaganda campaign that China has launched. “
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Some doctors believe that the epidemic started before December …
“Yes, according toe South China Morning Post from hong kong, we are aware of at least one official case on November 17, 2019 of a person who presented to a hospital. However in China measures will be taken later. Of course, we couldn’t predict the extent of the problem. But from the moment we had converging indications, China’s basic error, it was to hide this information. By withholding information, China has lost precious time.
By withholding information, China has lost precious time.
A study carried out by an Australian university shows that if we had disseminated the information earlier and in a more open way, we could have contained the virus much more quickly to limit the number of deaths and especially its spread outside of China. Because that’s what’s problematic today: the coronavirus is everywhere all over the world. Because there is this basic error of the first 4 or 5 weeks of the epidemic. This is what China wants to forget, by putting the spotlight on the pseudo-success of its containment methods and on the effectiveness of the measures. “
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Ironically, a big lier pretending as a China expert is trying to tell the so called ‘truth’ without any medical or pandemic common sense and available evidences. Beside this, this guy seems totally repeat Trump’s blaming tone though he dislike him at all. Based on the facts aforementioned, I strongly suspect this guy might get the hysteria syndrome and definitely deserve the serious medical caring. I recommend he should be sent to ICU asap as the mental disease might already destroy the regular brain functioning. Sincerely with kind regards