China would have us believe that its Wuhan region, where the novel coronavirus originated and spread to become a global pandemic, has not had a single new case for the past week. What do you think the odds are that this resembles the truth in any way?
China’s government has also reported only 3,000 deaths in the Hubei province, where Wuhan is located — a number that Wuhan’s residents have rejected as a full order of magnitude too small.
“It can’t be right,” a Wuhan resident told Radio Free Asia on Friday. “The incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?”
There’s one simple explanation for the disconnect between China’s numbers and the real-life experience of Wuhan’s people: China’s government is still lying. It’s not a big stretch, given that their lies began this entire drama.
The Chinese government suppressed information about the coronavirus’s origin. It attempted to downplay its seriousness to the rest of the world, maintaining through mid-January that it wasn’t even contagious. This is also the government that kicked out every U.S. journalist when the crisis became widespread, which means that accurate figures are extremely hard to come by.
Yet, there are still some willing to accept and even tout China’s containment model even though we know very little about it:
“U.S. outbreaks may be too far along for the South Korea model to work. The only thing left is the China model. It’s the only known success at subduing a full-blown epidemic. Instead of working with Beijing on finding lessons, the US is scapegoating China to deflect political blame,” the New York Times’s Max Fisher tweeted.
NBC’s Ken Dilanian similarly lauded China’s foreign aid efforts, writing, “With Italy in dire need of medical equipment, an economic superpower stepped in to help. No, not the United States. It was China.” Dilanian failed to mention that the “aid” China provided was completely ineffective. The testing kits Spain received worked about 30% of the time; the masks given to the Czech Republic did not meet the proper criteria; Dutch hospitals found out after the fact that the 600,000 masks delivered by China do not work.
And, of course, never mind that this aid is being provided solely for public relations purposes by a country where the virus is probably spreading unabated and in secret.
Even the World Health Organization praised China’s strategy, accepting its decreasing numbers at face value without once acknowledging Xi Jinping’s cover-ups, lies, and repression. In doing so, the WHO and its scientists served as vessels for Chinese falsehoods and communist propaganda.
Until China provides transparency, we should look at the information Xi’s regime provides with the utmost caution and skepticism. We have no reason to trust China’s numbers, yet there are many who continue to cite them as fact. We do, however, have every reason to disbelieve China, given its habitual dishonesty, manipulation, and appalling authoritarianism, and its government should not be awarded the smallest inkling of credit or praise of which it is certainly not deserving.
