Pandemic Reflection

The Destructive CCP Model(IV)

(Commentaries & Viewpoints)

Table of Content

Reflecting on the Measures Used to Counter COVID-19 Pandemic

The Pandemic Reveals the Chinese Communist Party’s True Nature and Awakens the Chinese Public

Chinese Protests and Communist Lies

Letter to the Editor: The Financial Crisis Behind the Relaxed COVID Controls in China

The Chinese Communist Party’s Self-destructive Promotion of Corruption and Suppressing the Upright

Communist China’s Social Credit System Is Being Copied Everywhere

China’s Sudden Shift on Zero-COVID Causes Chaos

China: A Year of Tumult and Hope

The Chinese Communist Party Continues Its Numbers Games Even After the End of Zero-COVID Policy

China’s Zero-COVID Policy a Shield for Windfall Revenues for Local Governments, Gene Companies

China Trolls the World

The CCP’s Pandemic Propaganda Collapses as China’s Infections and Deaths Peak

Reject the Chinese Communist Party to Stay Safe in the Pandemic

How to Stay Safe in China’s COVID Tsunami

Reflecting on the Measures Used to Counter COVID-19 Pandemic

July 12, 2022 |   By Min Sheng

(Minghui.org) Governments around the world have been using lockdowns and vaccines to fight COVID-19 for more than two years. These measures have created other problems and led many people to question if they were the right ones to take.

Shanghai’s lockdown, from April and May this year, exemplified the problems. Amid the strict lockdown, lack of food or access to non-COVID medical care have left many in a dire situation, perhaps taking more lives than COVID-19 itself. In addition, the city’s economy and even part of China’s overall economy have taken huge hits as a result of the lockdowns.

There are studies indicating that the lockdowns and vaccinations have not been as effective as promised.

Lockdowns

China has consistently stuck to lockdown measures for the past two and half years in attempts to ensure zero-COVID. Many other countries started with lockdowns and gradually opened up after vaccinations and reaching herd immunity.

In China’s enforced lockdown, the authorities become super powerful and violate individual rights at their discretion. They force everyone to stay at home, seal buildings or even the apartments themselves, enter homes to spray disinfectant without consent, and enforce use of health apps to control movement. Of course, there are also significant economic collapse and financial losses to the people locked down.

According to a report by The Epoch Times, an elderly man in Nangong City, Hebei Province, dropped dead while making a call to the mayor’s hotline, asking for help after he developed a fever. Many other residents fell ill at home and were not allowed to go out for medical treatment at all during the lockdown.

Ms. Gong of Hulan District, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, said, “Overnight, the government ordered closure of all schools, factories and businesses. No one was allowed to go to work. Stores weren’t allowed to open. No pedestrians or motor vehicles were allowed on the road. Everyone had to stay home. The whole city was like a ghost town.” Without enough food and basic supplies, a group of residents of a community lost control of their emotions and stabbed a volunteer guarding the community gate to death on February 3, 2021.

During Shanghai lockdown, a young father went to the hospital’s emergency room, but the doctors wouldn’t render medical attention until his Covid test result came back. He passed away while waiting for his test result, leaving behind his wife and their five-year-old child. His last words to his wife were, “Please check if my PCR test result has come out?”

A young couple argued with a government worker who came to take them to a makeshift hospital for quarantine. The couple said that something was wrong since their test results were negative, but the worker said he didn’t care: His job was to take them, so they must go with him; otherwise he would use force.

However, was the lockdown effective in containing the virus?

The Imperial College London conducted a REACT-1 (Real-time assessment of community transmission of coronavirus) research in January 2021. The United Kingdom imposed its third lockdown on January 4, 2021, but the research determined: “During the period 6 January to 22 January, infections remained high through the period with the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulating at a high prevalence.”

Studies in Applied Economics published an article in January 2022 titled “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality.” The authors found that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.

“More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs [shelter-in-place orders] were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific nonpharmaceutical intervention (NPI) studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality,” wrote the authors. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Vaccinations

In order to control the pandemic, many countries implemented “vaccine passports” to force people to get vaccines. In China, the authorities use various ways to force people to take vaccines.

But such practices raise many concerns given the reasons below.

According to an official Israeli report on August 7, 2021, 90% of the Israeli adult population has completed the COVID-19 vaccination. There were 3,849 new cases of infections on August 6, 2021 alone, of which 324 (close to 10%) were severely ill. Among the 324 severely ill patients, 209 people have been vaccinated. Earlier reports also indicated that more than 70% of confirmed cases in Israel had received two shots. Such data shows that vaccines are of limited effectiveness in preventing the spread of the virus, infection, and severe illness.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of June 4, 2021, there were 329,021 reports of adverse events after vaccination, including 5,888 deaths, 19,597 hospitalizations, 43,891 emergency room visits, 58,800 outpatient visits, 2,190 heart attacks, 1,087 myocarditis, 4,583 disabilities, 652 miscarriages, 15,052 severe allergic reactions, etc. Other symptoms include Bell’s palsy, thrombocytopenia, etc.

In an open letter posted on its website on May 25, 2021, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) mentioned the views of anti-vaccine epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, and microbiologists from around the world who are very concerned about the side effects of vaccines. The letter also listed severe headaches, nausea and vomiting, altered consciousness, altered speech, altered vision, hearing problems, different degrees of paralysis in different parts of the body, and loss of motor control, cerebral thrombosis, and other adverse effects.

In mainland China, despite the cover-up by the CCP authorities, netizens have revealed that there have many cases of deaths, leukemia, dizziness, and other symptoms believed to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

On August 3, 2021, a doctor of pharmacology named Tan Yadi pointed out the great harm of vaccines on Weibo (a Chinese microblogging website). She wrote, “How to prevent the COVID vaccines from being repeatedly injected in everyone with the support of unconfirmed hypotheses? The current vaccine rush is absurd, completely unconventional with the lightning-speed approval and vaccination. However, with the mutation of the virus, an immune barrier cannot be formed at all.”

The spike protein, the main component of the vaccine, combines immunogenicity and toxicity in one, she explained. Each vaccination is equivalent to being poisoned once, and she is afraid people will be dead or disabled after repeated vaccination.

She wrote, “Getting the first shot has already resulted in many women having irregular menstruation, men becoming impotent, and many elderly developing a myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and others.”

Testing

According to the U.S. CDC data published in January 2022, in the week ending on January 17, the new COVID cases due to omicron strain accounted for 99.5% of all cases. Its end of March data showed the three most popular omicron variants were BA.1, BA.1.1, and BA.2. By early July, the omicron variants have evolved into BA2.75 and then quickly to BA.5.

As the virus keeps mutating at a faster pace, will the research and production of PCR testing kits keep pace? What effect will there be when using the outdated testing kits?

Researchers have found that the severity of omicron strain is much less than delta but much more contagious.

China has been ordering residents to take PCR test every two days in high-risk areas. Lining up to test every two days not only disturbed people’s daily routines but also increased the risk of exposure.

Also, this every two days test was only to find out who is positive. Then the person will be either taken to quarantine or locked down at home. There is no real cure for the COVID virus.

China’s National Health Insurance Agency estimated in April 2022 that it will cost 1.45 trillion yuan (US $220 billion) to do the routine PCR test in only the big cities in China.

New Hope

The measures the governments have taken so far in fighting COVID, from lockdowns and vaccinations to PCR tests, may not be the right approaches.

Plagues came and went many times in history. Some examples included the Plague of Athens (430 BC), the Black Death in the 14th century, and the Spanish flu during World War I. Almost every time, the pandemic came suddenly and disappeared mysteriously. The governments’ prevention and control measures didn’t contribute to the disappearance of plagues.

Some people called it miracles when people survived the plagues or the plagues disappeared. But to others, there is a divine reason.

When a plague-infested Wittenberg in 1527, Martin Luther decided to stay and take care of the sick and dying. He believed that those who helped patients with virtue, devotion, and sincerity would be protected. In the end, he was able to survive the plague.

Another example was the village of Oberammergau in Bavaria, Germany. When a plague hit the region in 1633, half of the villagers died. The remaining residents vowed to perform “The Passion of Christ” every 10 years if God protected them from the plague. No one else in the village died of the plague after that, and the tradition of doing the play has continued to this day.

A similar situation happened in the late Ming Dynasty in China. A plague broke out that infected only Ming Dynasty soldiers but not the Manchu army. When the Shunzhi Emperor declared the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, however, the plague disappeared mysteriously.

There are always many uncertainties in life, but following our conscience and remaining good-natured will always bring blessings, for you, for me, and for our society.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/7/12/202207p.html

The Pandemic Reveals the Chinese Communist Party’s True Nature and Awakens the Chinese Public

July 18, 2022 | By Yu Ming

(Minghui.org) The harm caused by the extreme lockdown measures in China during the pandemic has been far greater than the virus itself. After personally experiencing those oppressive policies, many people have awakened to the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and decided to quit the Party and its affiliated organizations. Below are excerpts from people’s withdrawal statements.

“Little Pink” Awakened

Chu Junwen from Shandong Province used to be a “Little Pink,” a modern term given to the young, hypersensitive, hyper-nationalist supporters of the Communist Party. But now he has changed his view.

“I used to be a supporter of the Communist Party, and I always spurned those who opposed government policies. I learned a big lesson this time when I came down with Covid-19 and was placed under extremely strict quarantine. Our door was welded shut, and my life was turned upside down. I could not shop for groceries or go to work.

“I begged them to let me go out since my test was negative. Nobody paid any heed to my pleas. I lost my job due to the quarantine. I experienced first-hand the ‘rumors’ spread by the ‘traitors’ (what I used to call them). It turned out that everything they said was true!

“While browsing overseas sites on the internet during the quarantine, I learned what the CCP has done since it seized the power. It has committed so many atrocities. It is evil. I am so ashamed that, because of my ignorance, I have been standing with the devil all along. I wanted to use this platform to announce that I quit the Chinese Communist Party, the Youth League, and the Young Pioneers that I once joined. I hope more Chinese can see the true nature of the CCP and stop this violent regime.”

Party Officials Make a Fortune While People Struggle

Mr. Yin Fan from Heilongjiang wrote: “During this pandemic, the extreme ‘Zero Covid’ policy has made more and more people realize how sad it is to be born in this country. Party officials don’t have to do anything but stay at home and collect their wages, while ordinary people are isolated at home with no access to food. Look at Shanghai: Party officials sold the vegetables and groceries donated by other provinces at inflated prices. Those officials even wished the pandemic would never end, so they could make more and more money.

“All the evil things the CCP has done will be nailed to the pillar of shame as a historical record! I declare that I draw a clear line between me and the CCP, even though I am not a member of the Party. When the Chinese Communist Party is eliminated, I am not willing to be buried with it!”

Fang Zhenggao and Ren Juhui from Shanghai said in a statement: “The pandemic in Shanghai has made us see everything clearly. The Communist Party of China is evil. It totally disregards people’s safety and their lives and insists on carrying out the ‘Zero Covid’ policy. The supplies other provinces sent us are being sold by the corrupt Party officials and businessmen at super high prices. They would rather let the vegetables rot than give them to us. We hope the downfall of the CCP is not long in coming.”

An Upgraded Version of the “Cultural Revolution”

Qian Baida from Shanghai said: “This is an extreme, barbaric Cultural Revolution-style pandemic prevention policy. What is the difference between those people who break into others’ homes and spread disinfectant without the consent of the owner to those bandits who break into people’s houses and rob them? This took place in Shanghai, the financial center of China today. It is really appalling!

“To avoid being held accountable for the outbreak, local government officials make up policies of their own and cause chaos. People have to suffer the consequences of those inhuman policies. People have suffered so much under the CCP’s rule. We declare our resignation from the CCP and its affiliated organizations.”

Another person from China, Wang Shaoze, wrote: “Pandemic prevention has now become a political movement. Like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it is the common people who suffer. I wonder how much longer this disaster will last, and it is all-man-made. I declare that I quit the Young Pioneers and the Youth League and cancel any ties with the CCP.”

“It Is Terrible!”

Huang An’an said: “I grew up in China and now work in Shanghai. I thought I had a happy life. But this lockdown has terrified me. Those that run the government never think about the people. They only try to suppress us for their own gain. They don't care if we live or die. I was lucky to meet someone who reminded me of the evil deeds the CCP has committed and helped me to be more aware of its evil nature. I solemnly declare that I quit the Youth League and Young Pioneers I once joined. Heaven will eliminate the CCP!”

Two others, Liu Tiancheng and Guanhai, wrote: “Through this pandemic, we clearly see the evil nature of the Chinese Communist Party. It sacrifices the lives and safety of the general public for the sake of so-called political stability. We declare our withdrawal from the CCP and its related organizations. We will take responsibility for our own lives and future.”

See Through the Propaganda

On April 14, Wang Liping, Lin Li, and Wei Zong from the Pudong New Area in Shanghai announced their withdrawals from the CCP. They said: “The pandemic prevention measures in Shanghai made us completely despair for this country and this Party. We were locked down at home for more than a month and were given only a few green vegetables, tomatoes, and carrots after two weeks, but that ‘big gift package’ cost us 500 yuan!”

One of them sent a message asking for help, only to have his account blocked in less than an hour. “No one cares about our lives, and our quality of life is not even as good as a maggot’s!

“What’s even more disgusting is that when we turned on the TV, the news was about how peaceful and prosperous our lives are. They kept saying that the supplies were sufficient and the people were happy! I really don’t know how they can be so thick-skinned and brag so disgustingly.

“Survival is as hard as climbing to heaven. Looking at our food supply decreasing day by day, we will run out soon. We feel despondent.

“When I think of the time we swore to the blood-red flag of the CCP in college, I was so proud. But now I think it is really ridiculous. I hope the Chinese Communist Party will be eliminated soon. There is hope only when it perishes!”

“May God Bless Us”

Tianmei from Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, wrote, “After half a month of quarantine, it felt like a lifetime ago that I’d been out.” She had read Falun Gong information in the past but only now did she realize how serious the situation was. She announced her resignation from the Youth League and prayed, “May God bless us.”

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/7/18/202312.html

Did Beijing Plan to Use the Pandemic to Steal Data on a Global Scale?

Workers in protective suits keep watch on a street during a lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai, China, on April 16, 2022. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Thinking About China

China’s near total access to Americans’ personal data poses a clear and present national security risk

James Gorrie

Writer

September 27, 2022

Commentary

Could the CCP virus  and its impact on Western economies and societies have actually been planned to facilitate China ’s ongoing bid to rule the world through the capture and manipulation of billions of people’s individual data?

If that sounds like an exaggeration, that’s understandable.

Unfortunately, to deny the reality of what’s truly going on is wishful thinking. The reality is that the Chinese regime’s data theft operations have put U.S. national security and position of global leadership at risk .

The CCP  Has Deep Data on Every Adult American

To accomplish such a feat, China has been incredibly forward-looking in its data theft operations, which it has been perpetrating against its trading partners for decades. Americans remain their top target, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been successful in its efforts.

“It is estimated that 80 percent  of American adults have had all of their personal data stolen by the CCP, and the other 20 percent most of their personal data,” said Bill Evanina, former director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

That data would potentially include financial information, medical records, political preferences, buying habits, passwords to various accounts, and much more. Let that sink in for a moment.

Seeing the Pandemic in a Darker Light

It should put the last three years in a new and quite disturbing light—or darkness, if you will.

When one accounts for how much the world has changed—and continues to change–in the wake of the CCP virus and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s impossible to ignore just how much Beijing has leveraged those events to its strategic advantage.

A man takes a COVID-19 test at a pop-up testing site in New York on July 11, 2022. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

COVID Testing Is a Trojan Horse

Since the very beginning, it’s apparent that Beijing has been accessing and harvesting personal data by processing COVID tests in a Google-like fashion  on a global scale.

As I mentioned in a previous post , China is the main source of viral tests and analysis. Its offer to provide testing labs and facilities  seems to have been nothing less than a massive operation to gather Americans’ data in order to mine it and gain strategically important information on as many of us as possible.

In a “ 60 Minutes” interview , Evanina said the labs were “modern-day Trojan horses.” Their true purpose was to help the Chinese regime gain a “foothold” to bring in equipment, collect DNA, and start “mining your data.”

That’s quite a statement. In essence, no such testing equipment and subsequent data mining would be possible on such a scale without a pandemic to justify it.

The CCP’s Long History of Data Theft

But, of course, the CCP’s data theft efforts didn’t begin or end with harvesting data from COVID tests. The regime has been using networking equipment and social media technology to spy and steal data for decades. Huawei  and TikTok  are just two of many examples of that practice. The net result is a tremendous strategic advantage for China. The CCP knows much more about Americans and the United States—which the CCP considers its adversary in every sense of the word—than Americans know about the Chinese.

Again, this isn’t hyperbole. It’s not just personal data but critical technological information that China is capturing at an unprecedented rate. The U.S. National Counterintelligence fears  that “China is vacuuming up data about the U.S. and its citizens not just to steal secrets from U.S. companies or to influence citizens but also to build the foundation of technological hegemony in the not-too-distant future.”

Weaponizing Artificial Intelligence

But the CCP isn’t just capturing massive amounts of data on and from Western nations, which is bad enough. With no legal, moral, or ethical restraints, Beijing has likely weaponized artificial intelligence ( AI ) to gain strategic advantages  from its data theft operations.

According to Stephen Yates, chief executive of consultancy firm DC International Advisory, with regard to the CCP’s abuse of the rest of the world’s data, “China has weaponized  artificial intelligence and a lot of other studies of the human process in ways that civilized countries wouldn’t even allow, so we don’t have any way to really know what this dark window of the future might be.”

As noted in my Dec. 21, 2021, post , “Just as AI and genomics enable DNA manipulation to help the human body fight all kinds of diseases, this same technology can also be used to create unique pathogens that only impact specific people. DNA-specific weapons can target a race, a gender, or even a family or individual with a specific DNA structure. This isn’t just a possibility—it’s a probability , if not already a reality .”

In recent months, some national security authorities have also warned of the increasing likelihood of just such a reality coming to the fore. They point to the escalation  by the CCP in its efforts to capture and control every bit of data that enters the country, no matter the source. The CCP is deadly serious in those efforts, particularly regarding data from American and other Western firms that have a presence in China.

Thinking otherwise is simply not justified. The CCP’s pandemic behavior showed the world just what kind of inhumanity its capable of in incontrovertible terms.

James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/did-beijing-plan-to-use-the-pandemic-to-steal-data-on-a-global-scale_4749920.html

Chinese Protests and Communist Lies

Police officers block Wulumuqi street, named for Urumqi, in Shanghai, China, on Nov. 27, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Stu Cvrk

December 8, 2022

Commentary

There has been a crescendo of protests and riots in as many as 13 Chinese cities over the past two weeks. The White Paper protesters are tired of the arbitrary zero-COVID policy consisting of lockdowns , testing requirements, quarantines, and censorship. The signature policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been carried out with much brutality over the past two years.

“Zero-COVID” has wrecked Chinese lives and businesses and added another element of chaos to the churning Chinese economy that is already reeling from severe debt and real estate crises. Many people are tired of the informal “neighborhood committees” that have sprung up everywhere to enforce pandemic control policies or restrict the daily movements of local citizens. Others (although their numbers are unknown) have begun protesting the regime itself, calling for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to “ step down .”

That last is a red flag to the CCP, and authorities are now beginning to clamp down on protesters  by conducting interviews of people identified as protesters and also by exploiting the mandatory automated social control system. Most Chinese are required to use smartphones and other handheld devices to display their COVID testing status upon request to authorities and to allow access to public transportation and businesses (the ubiquitous green, yellow, and red color schemes used around the world).

The narrative inside China is also tightly managed, with state-run Chinese media virtually ignoring the protests and closely monitoring the Chinese internet to erase and stamp out dissent. Unfortunately for the CCP, its social control mandate has become a double-edged sword. Those same smartphones that monitor and report COVID status are used to quickly share direct evidence of the protests with other citizens and foreigners in recent days.

In any event, censors that manage the Great Firewall  have been hard at work deleting videos, pictures, posts, and especially chat histories from social media accounts that display and discuss personal observations of the protests in various Chinese cities.

Other elements of the response to the protests by the Chinese authorities include a mixture of lies and tough actions, such as the following:

Recently, a BBC reporter was reportedly beaten  and arrested by police while covering the protests—this was meant to send a warning to other foreign media that chose to report on the ongoing protests. This is a standard tactic, as the CCP knows that the foreign media will obsess over the protest story and propagate it everywhere to dissuade other journalists from making on-the-ground reports in China.

A man is arrested while people gather on a street in Shanghai to protest on Nov. 27, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

The CCP publicizes the “nationalist line” that blames unnamed foreigners for stirring the unrest. As reported by Reuters , “Prominent nationalist bloggers, such as Ren Yi, the grandson of Communist Party leader Ren Zhongyi, and Yu Li, who uses the pen name Sima Nan, wrote that the protests were fomented by ‘foreign forces.’” This is another standard tactic used in the CCP’s psychological warfare campaign that suppressed the Hong Kong protests in 2020.

Authorities blame the COVID testing companies that have profited greatly from the mandatory testing regimen implemented as part of the zero-COVID policy. Mandatory or insanely mandatory testing? Reuters reported that in Beijing, “a negative PCR test result within 48 hours [is required] for people to enter public places such as shopping malls, hotels, government buildings.” Such an onerous requirement makes it easy for the regime to shift blame for the protests to the testing companies. According to Bloomberg , “China’s Covid PCR testing companies are coming under increasing public criticism for profiting off the country’s controversial Covid-Zero strategy.” The reality is that this is yet another standard CCP tactic—blame-shifting and misdirection—that deflects the anger of the protesters away from the real root cause of the problem (the CCP).

Beijing announces the relaxation of some pandemic protocols in some cities. In response to international concerns, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that China has been adjusting the zero-COVID policy “based on the changing circumstances.” According to First Post , he stated: “We will keep improving science-based maximum protection to people’s lives and health and minimize the COVID impact on social economic development.” This tactic—policies vaguely claimed to have been changed without specifics—is another standard psychological feint used to persuade the Chinese people (and others) that the CCP is “responsive” to the people’s concerns.

Guaranteed Rights Under the Chinese Constitution

Does Xi Jinping feel even the slightest bit of shame or embarrassment about these protests?

Do the “guarantees” of the rights of Chinese citizens under the CCP’s constitution mean anything, or are they merely window dressing to try to convince people that the Communist Party is “civilized” and “legitimate” simply because it has a written constitution?

Amid the ongoing protests, CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily  on Nov. 30 had the chutzpah to announce a “weeklong campaign to publish the Chinese constitution” beginning on Dec. 4, which is “Constitution Day” in China. Interestingly, Chinese authorities were forced to block protests in Tiananmen Square  in 2014 when the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp legislature) first rubber-stamped the designation of Constitution Day.

Consider some of these rights that are “guaranteed” by the so-called constitution  in the context of the suppression of the ongoing White Paper protests:

Article 33: “ All citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law. The state shall respect and protect human rights.”

But the CCP violates the fundamental human rights of Chinese citizens whenever convenient or threatened, and some citizens are “less equal than others”—including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong adherents, and anti-zero-COVID protesters. Protesting COVID measures that force compliance and adversely impact people’s lives apparently doesn’t qualify as a human right in China.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to raise awareness about the Chinese regime’s brutal persecution of the spiritual practice, including forced organ harvesting, in New York on May 13, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Article 35:  “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession, and demonstration.”

How are those “guaranteed rights” working out for the protesters these days? The foreign press is intimidated, and suppression of the protesters is underway across China.

Article 37:  “The personal freedom of citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not be violated. No citizen shall be arrested unless with the approval or by the decision of a people’s procuratorate or by the decision of a people’s court, and arrests must be made by a public security organ.”

Another meaningless “right,” as protesters have been and are being detained by local law enforcement without cause . How many more such incidents have been hidden behind the Great Firewall?

Article 40:  “Freedom and confidentiality of correspondence of citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall be protected by law.”

This is perhaps the most laughable constitutional “right” of all! Chinese censors continually violate this right as they censor and remove content from social media and other sources associated with the protests. There are no such things as privacy and “confidentiality of correspondence” in communist China!

Concluding Thoughts

At much risk to themselves, Chinese protesters continue expressing their displeasure with Xi’s signature zero-COVID policy, adversely affecting their daily lives. The White Paper protests are overwhelmingly supported by the American people, who fully understand and exercise the right to demonstrate against unacceptable government policies. A Rasmussen poll on Dec. 1  indicated that “76% of Likely U.S. voters approve of the protests in China, including 53% who Strongly Approve.”

The CCP’s suppression of the protesters clearly violates China’s constitution, which ostensibly guarantees certain rights for all Chinese citizens.

The blame-shifting campaign by the regime is nothing other than an attempt to preserve the legitimacy of the CCP, which has crushed basic human rights and freedoms in China since 1949.

Communist China’s constitution is a model of vagueness and lack of specificity, which allows the authorities to interpret the provisions any way they choose—in short, to boldly lie to anyone and everyone. And that arbitrariness of government actions in the preservation of the CCP is what is being played out yet again in China.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-protests-and-communist-lies_4901496.html

Letter to the Editor: The Financial Crisis Behind the Relaxed COVID Controls in China

Dec. 10, 2022

(Minghui.org) A friend of mine is a government official in Haizhu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. In the past week, Guangdong became the first province in the country to suddenly relax the COVID prevention rules. According to my friend, this was done because the government could no longer bear the financial cost of the zero-Covid policy and they are already heavily indebted.

For example, the hotels that were used as quarantine centers had begun to evict the people there, as the government couldn’t pay the hotels for providing room and board.

As an alternative, the authorities turned to schools, only to receive mounting complaints from parents. Unable to pay for the pandemic workers, the authorities had to mobilize teachers to work as volunteers. With the shortage of teachers, the schools had to arrange the students from different classes to attend virtual lectures together.

The government mobilized the teachers because they were one of the few remaining professions that were still receiving regular paychecks, whereas other agencies couldn’t even afford to pay their employees.

As the government had trouble paying COVID testing companies, the companies in turn struggled to pay their workers, causing many of them to quit. If the strict measures were to continue, the annual GDP of Guangzhou would be only 2% and would likely trigger an even more severe financial crisis.

Due to the strict pandemic measures, the small businesses that accounted for the majority of economic growth in Guangzhou have suffered significantly. If more companies went out of business, many people would lose their jobs, rendering them unable to pay their home and car loans. When people’s livelihoods are jeopardized, social upheaval may follow.

The same is true in other regions of the country. When the government could no longer afford to pay people to work for them, who would still collect information about COVID patients or make arrangement for the quarantine?

My friend added that the economy of Guangdong Province was just too important for the central government and that it contributed 40% of the social security special funding that the central government collected from all provinces. The special funding is usually used to subsidize poorly-performing provinces in their social security programs. If Guangzhou couldn’t make the same contribution to the special fund, some retirees in other parts of the country would no longer be able to receive their pensions, which may bring about more stability concerns for the Chinese Communist Party.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/12/10/205121.html

The Chinese Communist Party’s Self-destructive Promotion of Corruption and Suppressing the Upright

Dec. 12, 2022 | By Zheng Nian

(Minghui.org) Zi Gong, a student of Confucius, was appointed as head of Xinyang County (in today’s Henan Province) and he went to Confucius to bid farewell. Confucius reminded him of the principles of “no seizing or crusading, and no bullying or stealing.”

To replace a virtuous and competent person with another capable person is called “seizing,” while replacing someone capable with an incompetent person is called “crusading,” explained Confucius. On the other hand, harsh punishment without warning is known as “bullying” while taking possession of good things not belonging to oneself is known as “stealing.”

Throughout history, there are many good examples of “no seizing or crusading, and no bullying or stealing.” Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, however, it has been constant “seizing, crusading, bulling, and stealing.” Especially after Jiang Zemin rose to the top position in the CCP after 1989, China had been turned into a land of corruption.

Below are several contrasting ancient and modern examples of approaches to governance.

Honesty and Integrity in Ancient Times

Emperor Taizong and his Tang Dynasty were often considered to be at the pinnacle of Chinese history. By governing with virtue and promoting talents, the entire country was civilized and properous. Historians wrote that the prisons were sometimes nearly empty. During the sixth year of his rule as emperor, Taizong allowed 390 death row prisoners to return home to be with their families and to come back after the Chinese New Year for their executions. Seeing all 390 prisoners coming back as promised, the Emperor praised their credibility and pardoned their death sentences.

Another peak of history occurred during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. Shortly after he came to power, he prohibited seizing land to enrich the royal families as previous emperors did. In addition, he extended the tax-free period for the newly claimed wasteland. Later on, he waived the taxes of all provinces for one year and issued a new policy to stop tax increases. During his 60 years as emperor, Kangxi waived taxes 545 times in total. This added to 150 million taels of silver (one tael is 50 grams, or 0.05 kilograms), about six times the country’s revenue per year.

These stories help explain how Chinese civilization lasted thousands of years. From time to time, there were self-indulgent emperors and officials who seized, crusaded, bullied, or stole, but their overall impact on society was limited.

Era of Jiang Zemin and the CCP

Modern China under the rule of the CCP couldn’t be further from the divinely-inspired Chinese civilization of ancient times. The decline in society became even worse after Jiang Zemin rose to the top of the CCP for his active role in cracking down on the student democratic movement in 1989.

Since the CCP’s 18th National Congress in 2012, 4.08 million CCP members have been disciplined. Among them were 1.4 million government officials, including over 500 province-level or higher-ranking officials. Most of them were investigated or convicted for taking bribes. Many people attributed this messy situation to Jiang Zemin, who is often known as the “head coach of corruption.”

The CCP’s core ideology of falsehood, evilness, and class struggle rendered the regime and its officials susceptible to “seizing, crusading, bullying, and stealing.” Nonetheless, it was during Jiang’s tenure that the corruption issue really got out of control. After all, he rose to the top by suppressing the democratic moment, and without any other merits. In order to win loyalty from officials, he encouraged corruption on their part. After he ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Jiang further used financial incentives to instigate officials, the police, procuratorates, the courts, and other government agencies to carry out his persecution policy.

Such a “deal” between Jiang and his followers – anyone who followed him closely would be rewarded with privilege and/or money – could be considered a co-destruction model [a concept in marketing research that refers to the collaborative destruction of value by providers and customers], as all who do wrong will eventually face consequences.

The corruption of Jiang and other CCP officials soon trickled down to the general public, with almost everyone seeking to maximize their own benefits at all costs. Counterfeit goods and poisonous food became commonplace. Those who sold counterfeit rice would not eat their own rice, and those who sold poisonous pork did not eat their own pork. But that does not necessarily mean they could avoid fake or unhealthy food from other merchants. When people are knowingly or unknowingly harming others for their own benefit, the whole of society has sunken into a “co-destruction” state.

Such a problem can endanger people’s lives. Because of poor construction, a large number of school buildings collapsed in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, which killed at least 70,000 people (many of them school children). Many deceased students’ parents went to the local court to protest against the poor quality of the school buildings and request that the courts accept their lawsuits against the builders and the schools. But many of them were arrested instead. Tan Zuoren, a writer who devoted himself to investigating the quality of school buildings, was sentenced to a five-year term in 2010.

In ancient times, corruption of officials was often limited to individual cases. But after the CCP destroyed traditional Chinese culture and Jiang further plunged the nation into moral decay, corruption has become commonplace. Instead of serving the people, CCP officials have only been concerned about lining their own pockets. In the above earthquake example, local officials greenlighted school building projects without looking into the quality issues because builders had bribed them into accepting their bids.

Suppressing the Upright

Besides promoting corruption, Jiang also suppressed those who could bring society back on track. During the major flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998, Jiang visited the scene and was impressed by a group of people who worked extremely hard fighting the flood and rescuing people. Jiang sent someone to ask if they were CCP members, and the answer was that they were practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Jiang immediately became very unhappy because he could not tolerate the fact that Falun Gong practitioners were well regarded everywhere for being good people.

Jiang feared that Falun Gong’s popularity could threaten his own control over the people and singlehandedly launched the persecution of the practice in July 1999, despite Falun Gong’s huge health benefits and promotion of moral improvement.

According to Minghui Report: The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China, at least 2.5 or 3 million practitioners were arrested between 1999 and 2019. Over 4,800 practitioners have been confirmed to have lost their lives as a direct result of the persecution. Furthermore, a larger number of practitioners were terminated from their jobs, detained, imprisoned, and tortured. Some were also subjected to psychiatric abuse and forced labor, and an unknown number became victims of forced organ harvesting.

By suppressing Falun Gong and the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, Jiang further destroyed China’s moral foundation. When a reporter asked a six-year-old girl in Guangdong Province what she wanted to do after she grew up, the girl said she wanted to become a governmental official.

“What kind of official?” asked the reporter.

“A corrupt one,” the girl replied, “because I’d then get lots of good, free stuff that way.”

Society is truly in danger when an innocent child aspires to be a corrupt official.

A Lesson for Mankind

Looking back at the history of communism over the past 100-plus years, especially the past few decades since the CCP took power, one may find the good and bad sides of human nature in full display.

Some were afraid of the CCP’s brutality and chose to follow the regime out of their own self-interest; some took advantage of the opportunities and raked in more fortune for themselves; some, including both Chinese and non-Chinese, knew that Jiang and the CCP suppressed the innocent, but could not resist the lucrative financial incentives.

To a degree, what has happened in China is similar to what is described in Revelations: “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed for

nication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.”

Anyone who follows the CCP will face consequences when the time of reckoning comes against the CCP for its crimes against innocent people. More than 405 million Chinese people have quit the CCP organizations (which also include its two junior organizations, the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers). As more citizens from around the world choose to reject the CCP, we will see hope on the horizon.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/12/12/205152.html

Communist China’s Social Credit System Is Being Copied Everywhere

A staff member walks inside a makeshift hospital that will be used for COVID-19 patients in eastern China’s Shanghai on April 7, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Stu Cvrk

December 12, 2022

Commentary

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is hell-bent on achieving a modern version of the surveillance state portrayed in George Orwell’s masterpiece “ 1984 ” that enables state control over business enterprises, the media, other institutions, and individuals through round-the-clock monitoring of the activities of Chinese citizens.

The main component of Xi’s evolving surveillance state involves the evolutionary development of an automated social credit system  that enables the state to reward or punish the behavior of people and businesses as deemed appropriate by communist government bureaucrats.

Other countries are envious of China’s social credit system. They are dabbling with their own approaches to social controls modeled after what the Chinese communists have been able to achieve (so far).

Let us examine the topic.

What Is a Social Credit System?

The vision for “China’s Social Credit System (CSCS)” was laid out in an official document released by the Chinese State Council in 2014 titled “ Guidelines of Social Credit System Construction (2014–2020) .”

The purpose of the Chinese social credit system is to surveil, monitor, assess, control, and shape the behavior and “trustworthiness” of all citizens and enterprises in communist China. Trustworthiness is defined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as obedient and self-disciplined behavior that does nothing that might challenge the arbitrary diktats of the CCP. The process involves surveilling the everyday activities of citizens via security cameras and close-circuit TV monitoring to establish individual “social credit scores” that can be used by the state to restrict and reward “proper” behavior. These scores are a drastic expansion of the credit scores with which most people are familiar.

The scores for individuals are compiled based on compliance with specific government-mandated behavior. For example, getting COVID-19 boosters on time (“good”) but not frequent PCR tests (“bad”), obeying curfews (“good”) and disobeying jaywalking laws (“bad”), purchasing Chinese-made goods (“good”) or foreign goods (“bad”), displaying frequent tardiness at work or school (“bad”), complying with government regulations on social media content (“good”), or sharing prohibited videos and chats (“bad”), etc.

The scores for business enterprises are compiled based on the full range of a given company’s business operations, which could include quality of goods and services provided, on-time delivery (or not), responsiveness to customers, paying workers on time (or not), on-time payment of taxes (or not), customer ratings, profitability, etc.

Achieving a high social credit score means exhibiting behavior approved by the state and accessing privileges granted by the state for that “good behavior.” For example, a good score might enable a citizen to travel to another city to visit relatives, while a bad score might preclude that opportunity. Or a good score might facilitate renting an up-scale apartment, whereas a bad score might restrict one’s choices to less-desirable options. And in the current draconian “zero-COVID” climate, having a bad COVID score (defined by the regime) might restrict a person’s ability to go to the grocery store or open-air market to buy food.

For businesses, there are rewards and punishments, too. Rewards could include access to a larger customer base, tax breaks for good behavior (defined by the regime), and public endorsements from Beijing. Punishments could consist of punitive taxes, penalty fees, and blacklisting.

The Chinese system being implemented incorporates advanced technologies such as facial recognition, artificial intelligence, smart cameras for surveillance, big-data processing, and the Internet of Things to digitally monitor compliance. These technologies are being integrated to support automated monitoring and assignment of social credit scores of every individual and business in the country.

While its implementation in China has been piecemeal to date, the sky is the limit regarding the types of behaviors that could eventually be monitored and controlled by the state over time. Privacy rights could even be restricted to the bedroom only if the communists have their way, but even that could be up for grabs in the future!

China’s social credit system is a potential money-maker for the communists, too, as authoritarians around the world are watching China’s rollout of their system with envy. Better to buy a basic capability from the CCP and tailor it to local needs than to build a similarly complex system from scratch.

A man walks in front of a housing complex by Chinese property developer Evergrande in Beijing on Oct. 21, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Foreign Enthusiasm for Social Credit Systems

The advance of internet-related and other information technologies has opened new vistas for the authoritarian-minded who seek to monitor and control people’s behaviors for various purposes. The art of the possible is being pushed in a number of technology areas: quantum computing , artificial intelligence , machine learning , speech recognition , facial recognition , smart devices , edge computing , and the internet .

Monitor and control are to authoritarians as chasing and pouncing are to predators. It is in their DNA. Thus, authoritarian-minded politicians worldwide have been closely watching the CCP’s efforts at integrating these technologies to achieve a nationwide social credit monitoring and control system. Several countries are implementing pieces of the capabilities for their own uses.

United Kingdom

Last December, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans  to implement the first elements of a social credit system in the UK. Johnson stated: “The scheme will monitor supermarket spending, rewarding those who reduce their calorie intake and buy more fruit and vegetables. People who increase their exercise by taking part in organized events or walking to school would also accumulate more ‘points’ in the new app.”

The UK has also been looking into implementing “COVID passports” that would restrict the movements of the unvaccinated. Although the plan has been shelved, for now, the next “pandemic” could see a rapid rollout of this important element of social controls.

Germany

There are no official plans to implement a social credit system in Germany (yet). However, several official studies have been conducted to assess their applicability to German society. As reported by the website Fully Human , the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research published a study in August 2020 that “assessed the value and compatibility of a social credit system based on the Chinese model to German democracy” (the study is available in German (pdf ).

Of interest is that the study was driven by the “dynamics of climate change” and the “distribution of asylum seekers and their integration into the labor market,” which are key issues for globalists who wish to implement a top-down economy that is facilitated by a global social credit and control system.

Italy

As reported earlier this year by The European Union Times , “Italy will be the first in the EU, and the West, to implement a government-sponsored social credit system with the rollout of its new rewards-based program that aims to modify people’s climate change behaviour by assigning a score based on their compliance.”

Observers expect that the “Green Certificate” system will eventually be mandated and combined with the European Digital Identity  and EU Digital COVID Certificate  to form the basics of an integrated social credit scoring system for Italians and other EU citizens. The Digital ID will facilitate monitoring and tracking of all business transactions, while the Digital COVID Certificate will be used to control the movements of citizens based on vaccination status.

Sweden

Sweden has moved to a cashless society  through the widespread implementation of BankID and Swish apps for instant payment purposes, as well as using digital wallets or credit cards for payments via smartphone. Of course, being able to monitor and track all payment transactions is one degree of separation away from implementing a social credit monitoring system, especially when combined with the aforementioned European Digital Identity and EU Digital COVID Certificate.

Canada

The Canadian federal government has produced a vision document titled “ Canada’s Digital Ambition 2022″  that lays out “a plan to digitize all public-facing and internal government services, such as old age security and the tax department, with an artificial intelligence-powered, cloud-based system,” as reported by Vision Times . The key elements are the rollout of digital ID, a digital currency, and a COVID passport system .

Supporters of the Freedom Convoy protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in front of Parliament of Canada, in Ottawa, Canada, on Jan. 28, 2022. A convoy of truckers started from Vancouver on Jan. 23, 2022, on its way to protest against the mandate in the capital city of Ottawa. (Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images)

Singapore

Singapore has developed one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance and monitoring systems. According to Singapore news portal Kuanyewism , “the most visible and controversial example of state surveillance in Singapore was the introduction of TraceTogether back in 2020, a digital system implemented by the government initially as a tool to facilitate contact tracing efforts, but subsequently silently morphed into a de-facto vaccine passport and individual citizen-tracking tool over time.” A social credit system seems to be in the future for Singaporeans.

United States

Polls have shown  that Democrats support COVID passports, which led the Biden administration to “ work with industry ” to help “develop credentials—referred to as passports, health certificates or travel passes—showing proof of vaccination as individuals and businesses,” Fox Business reported.

Democrats (and others) are also in favor of implementing central bank digital currencies  (CBDC) as a move toward a cashless society (which makes monitoring all currency transactions much easier for the government).

President Joe Biden signed an executive order  in March to begin the research, design, and “societal implications” of a U.S. CBDC. His administration seeks to implement an environmental-social-governance (ESG) social credit system  to force business compliance with left-wing social goals.

Finally, the Twitter-Democrat collusion story  has provided a glimpse into the Democrats’ suppressing of political dissent (and the First Amendment) through the U.S. version of China’s “Great Firewall,” consisting of Twitter, Google, Facebook, and U.S. government agencies!

Concluding Thoughts

Communist China is the world’s leader in implementing a comprehensive social credit system. Similar authoritarian impulses to monitor and control populations are on the rise around the world, as evinced by the piecemeal rollout of various social credit and control system components in other countries, as well as the completion of government-sponsored studies and plans that examine future possibilities.

The primary bulwark against implementing a government-sponsored social credit system in the United States is the collection of privacy rights passed into law over the last several decades that protect personal data and information from public disclosure and misuse. These include  the Privacy Act of 1974 (protects handling of personal information), Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (constraints on corporations handling personal data), the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act (protection of data by financial institutions), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (protection of consumer credit information), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA—protection of health information).

It is imperative that Americans are vigilant to ensure that these protections, as well as those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, are not undermined by authoritarians in Congress and the White House who seek to implement a Chinese-style social credit system in the United States.

Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/communist-chinas-social-credit-system-is-being-copied-everywhere_4905839.html

China’s Sudden Shift on Zero-COVID Causes Chaos

Police and people are seen clashing during a protest against China’s zero-COVID policy in Shanghai on Nov. 27, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Heng He

December 15, 2022

Commentary

Over a week has passed since China abandoned its zero-COVID  policy. The sudden move caused chaos in society, and Beijing was not prepared.

The drugs for flu and fever are sold out. Long queues are seen outside the hospitals consisting of people with fever, mild common cold symptoms, or those who want to consult a doctor for other ailments. Until Dec. 11, the number of patients visiting the hospital increased by 16 times compared to a week ago, and the 120 emergency numbers saw call volumes increase by six times, according to Chinese media. Nobody was prepared, including the general population, the medical staff and facilities, and even the media.

It was a sudden turn of events. The move to abandon zero-COVID resulted from the State Council’s new regulation  announced on Dec. 7—it was merely a modified version of a regulation released last month. Since Beijing claimed that the November regulation was based on the experiences  of the epidemic prevention and control practice and data evaluation, there should be no need to replace it in such a short time. The previous regulation was carrying out the policy, while the new one is giving up on it.

What has changed? COVID-19 and the pattern of its transmission haven’t changed. But the number of those who tested positive for the disease increased, which should lead to enhanced reinforcement of the zero-COVID policy rather than abandoning it. The only significant recent event is the White Paper protest.

White Paper Movement

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the recent protests were much more challenging than any other past demonstrations. The last large-scale protest happened 33 years ago in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The other demonstrations in between were limited either to specific regions or specific groups. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not afraid of regional protests that happen all the time because the demands are hardly echoed in other regions. It’s almost impossible to simultaneously have people in different provinces and cities with similar demands. But this year’s lockdown in many cities, including Shanghai, just did that.

The lockdowns angered many Chinese but what triggered the protests was the high-rise fire that broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of China’s Xinjiang region. The protests in different areas had one demand in common: lift the lockdowns. Unlike the 1989 pro-democracy protests, in which the people asked the CCP to change its authoritarian rule, the White Paper protesters went further and called for the CCP and Xi to step down.

Firefighters spray water on a fire at a residential building in Urumqi, in western China’s Xinjiang region, on Nov. 24, 2022, in a still from a video. From a different angle, it could be seen that the water could not reach the fire in the building due to firefighters reportedly being trapped outside a COVID-19 blockade. (AP Photo)

In 1989, the protests were initiated by university students in Beijing, led by the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation. The protests mainly took place in Tiananmen Square. But this time, most of the protesters were residents that couldn’t be easily dispersed. Without a center and leadership, the CCP couldn’t use tanks as they did in 1989. The CCP couldn’t even find a person or a group to arrest or negotiate with. This means the regular measures to quell a protest are useless this time. There’s only one way to resolve the issue: lift the lockdowns.

It’s unusual to have CCP leaders change their minds, especially to back down from the people. Actually, the CCP has never changed an important policy under public pressure—not once. In 1957, when the intellectuals tried to give suggestions to the Party, they became the targets of the Anti-Rightists campaign. In 1959, when then-Minister of Defense Peng Dehuai questioned Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign, he was accused of leading an anti-Party bloc. In 1989, when the student protesters asked the CCP to do something about its own corruption, they were met with tanks. In 1999, when Falun Gong adherents asked for religious freedom, which is written in China’s Constitution, they have been brutally persecuted ever since. None of the demands of the people has been fulfilled. The CCP and its leaders can’t show weakness.

Falun Gong practitioners gather near Zhongnanhai to peacefully appeal for their freedom of belief, in Beijing, on April 25, 1999. (Photo courtesy of Minghui.org)

Xi is faced with a big problem. As we know, he has bound himself to the zero-COVID policy. For the first two years of the pandemic, when the rest of the world suffered from partial lockdown, China seemed to be doing fine, except for the Wuhan lockdown in early 2000. The production line was in full gear to supply the world. China bragged about it as the advantage of being a socialist country compared to the free world. Many world politicians and financial institutions praised China as a role model in fighting COVID. During the pandemic, China promoted vaccine diplomacy, the “China Model,” and Xi’s idea of an international community with a “common destiny for mankind.”

Any change to the zero-COVID policy would really hurt Xi. That’s why China did the opposite when the whole world gradually loosened its measures against the pandemic this year. Chinese authorities locked down major cities, including Shanghai and Zhengzhou. To justify the strict measures, the state media quoted some Western research models claiming that more than 1 million people would die if the lockdown were to be lifted. No one has ever mentioned that the actual number of COVID deaths could be over 1 million in China. However, the CCP believes that as long as people don’t die from COVID, the numbers don’t count. It won’t damage the CCP’s image of greatness, glory, and righteousness.

Could the recent chaos have been avoided? Reopening society is a complicated task requiring coordination from different government bodies, professionals of various fields, and the general population. However, none of them was possible. Zero-COVID was the CCP’s policy, directly initiated and promoted by Xi. It’s never about science or medicine; it’s always about politics. Under the CCP’s rule, the policy cannot be questioned, much less challenged. In recent years, challenging the CCP has been called “ dare to talk about the CCP ” (妄議中央). Criticizing and challenging the CCP is a discipline violation and even a crime.

As long as Xi doesn’t change his mind, no one dares to prepare for the possible zero-COVID policy change. The chaos revealed that the CCP regime can’t change with the times. The CCP couldn’t stop the Cultural Revolution until Mao died. The CCP can’t abolish zero-COVID until who knows what happens to Xi. No wonder the French scholar Jean-Philippe Béja questioned Xi’s hold on power.

The CCP still hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing in the Tiananmen Square massacre, the persecution of Falun Gong adherents, Tibetans, and Uyghurs, and the end of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” policy. The CCP always chooses the worst path in every historical event—there’s no exception.

The White Paper movement and the recent chaos also exposed a crack in the CCP regime. The world saw that the CCP is not as great as it appears. More importantly, many Chinese realized that the CCP is not perfect. Even Xi, despite securing an unprecedented third term, could be forced to get rid of his signature zero-COVID policy under public pressure. The CCP is digging its own grave.

Heng He is a commentator on Sound of Hope Radio, China analyst on NTD’s “Focus Talk,” and a writer for The Epoch Times.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-sudden-shift-on-zero-covid-causes-chaos_4923333.html

China: A Year of Tumult and Hope

Protesters shout slogans during a protest against China’s strict zero-COVID measures in Beijing on Nov. 28, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Rising totalitarianism in the context of emerging dissent

Anders Corr

December 17, 2022 Updated: December 18, 2022

Commentary

The latest tumult from China is a microcosm of the past year. The People’s Liberation Army attacked across the de facto border into India, and swarmed the Philippine Islands. Xi Jinping supposedly ended strict COVID-19 lockdowns due to the biggest protests since Falun Gong protesters  surrounded the Chinese Communist Party’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound in 1999.

Inklings of hope emerged from the “white paper” protests, in which thousands of young people across China risked their lives to raise blank sheets of paper and signify their opposition to China’s lockdowns. Some called for Xi and the CCP to “step down.”

Unfortunately, that looks unlikely in 2023. Xi got himself appointed to a norm-breaking third term as general secretary of the CCP in October. He continued in 2022 to eradicate opposition through a long-running “anti-corruption” campaign that defenestrates opposing politicians and leading entrepreneurs, including in technology, education, and property development.

China’s economy stumbled in 2022 due to the lockdowns, deflation of the property bubble, and increasing debt. This resulted in the loading of the financial system with risk from increased responsibilities for bailouts and lower reserve requirements.

The United States and its allies increasingly impose sanctions and export controls on China, intended to both improve its human rights and decrease its power. Federal and state entities moved against  China’s tech companies, including a developing computer chip war and measures against Huawei, TikTok, and China’s overseas tech investors.

Major Chinese companies listed  on U.S. stock exchanges—such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Baidu—experienced downward pressure on their market capitalization from U.S. audit laws. While the CCP resisted the audits for years, it finally accepted them this month. Companies that will be subject to the audits have thus escaped U.S. delisting but fell further in trading, in the context of worries about what the audits might uncover.

The logo for Alibaba Group is seen on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 3, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

International companies have begun the process of diversifying supply chains  to other countries like India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Nevertheless, Xi appears bent on following his mercantilist and hegemonic agendas.

In February, Beijing hosted what activists called the “ Genocide Olympics ” due to the regime’s treatment of Uyghurs. Diplomats from 10 countries—led by the United States, Britain, and Canada—boycotted the Winter Games.

The CCP continues to see Taiwan  as a renegade province and has plans to invade. In response, democratic countries around the world are deepening ties with the island democracy. Lithuania, for example, opened  a trade office in Taipei in November. Beijing responded by downgrading relations. Earlier in the year, the CCP allegedly halted the clearance of Lithuanian goods due to the opening of a Taiwanese trade office in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. This month in response, the European Union brought China to court at the World Trade Organization.

Xi has concentrated political power on himself and insulated it from dissenting voices. The CCP politburo is now a group of yes-men. This will likely lead Xi to make more disastrous choices for China and the world in 2023, including an increase in coal-burning power plants.

If China’s economy does improve due to a relaxation of COVID lockdowns, Xi will use that economic strength to further the influence of the CCP globally and empower his military to the point where it will need to be used—for example, against Taiwan—for Xi to maintain his power.

Conflicts with China will likely increase in 2023. An invasion of Taiwan could come at any time, especially while the West is off balance due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response, the United States and European Union, the world’s two biggest economies, increasingly see Beijing as an adversary and long-term threat. Arms sales to Taiwan have increased, as have military budgets. That trend will likely continue as public opinion in democracies learns from repeated negative interactions with China under communist rule.

But let’s also look at the silver lining of 2022 and what that might mean for 2023. The lockdown protests were the biggest in over 20 years. They forced the CCP to at least give the appearance of backing down from a policy closely associated with Xi himself. They could spread to other regions, like Hong Kong, as new issues emerge in 2023 that mobilize Chinese citizens more widely.

Only if Beijing listens to its people, ultimately by democratizing the country and improving its human rights, will it reverse its self-defeating trend toward totalitarianism, economic decoupling from the rest of the world, and a pariah-state status.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea” (2018).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-a-year-of-tumult-and-hope_4928208.html

The Chinese Communist Party Continues Its Numbers Games Even After the End of Zero-COVID Policy

Dec. 25, 2022 | By Qing Xin and Lu Nan

(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always claimed that it serves the people wholeheartedly when, in fact, whatever it does is only to serve its own agenda.

It cited “scientific evidence” to support its zero-COVID policy when other countries had learned to live with the virus, given the fact that the Omicron variant was shown to have a higher transmission rate but lower fatality rate when compared to earlier variants.

After the CCP recently decided to end the zero-COVID policy in the face of a struggling economy and citizen protests, it said the COVID symptoms were not much different from those of a cold and asked every citizen to be responsible for their own health. While Chinese citizens were relieved to see the end of the draconian pandemic measures, they were frustrated to see the regime still playing numbers games when it came to reporting COVID cases and deaths.

As COVID cases skyrocket across China, the CCP continues to report its unusually low “accurate” numbers. After the Liaoning Province Health Commission announced on Weibo social media, “5 new cases today, all of them in Shenyang [the capital],” netizens were furious at the blatant lie.

“Stop the nonsense! I have more than five friends who got infected,” one person posted.

“Oh, five? I know all of them,” another person wrote. “There are five newly infected members in my family!”

According to the Central News Agency, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) revealed at a meeting on December 21 that the agency estimated that, between December 1 and 20, there were about 248 million cases of infection, representing 17.6% of China’s population. But that number was never officially reported.

Censorship and Numbers Games

The first coronavirus infection was detected in December 2019, but officials and news media controlled by the CCP downplayed the situation. Even after the epicenter of Wuhan was locked down on January 23, 2020, government agencies at every level were still required to under-report the number of infections and misinform the public. As of March 6, 2020, China officially reported 80,813 cases, including 67,592 in Wuhan alone, and 3,073 deaths.

The CCP’s cover up of the pandemic caused tremendous damage. By March 6, 2020, the disease had spread to nearly 100 countries and territories with over 100,000 infections and close to 3,500 deaths around the world. Right now, over 661 million total infections have been reported worldwide with 6.7 million deaths.

Liu Jiaxin, a resident of Wuhan who arrived in Los Angeles in September 2020, witnessed the entire process. While in Wuhan, he lived within walking distance of Huanan Seafood Market, where the virus was believed to have originated. He was very nervous when he heard about the disease. But all the news media—which are controlled by the CCP—said that the virus could not spread to humans and denounced the “rumor.” Liu trusted the government and felt safe.

After he started having symptoms, however, both the local hospital and neighborhood administration dropped the ball, leaving Liu with no access to appropriate treatment. Although his symptoms—coughing up blood and fever—were COVID symptoms, he was not reported as such. In the end, Liu took medications himself and recovered, but he lost his sense of taste and smell forever.

“You can never believe what the [CCP] government says,” Liu said. “You need to find out the facts for yourself.” From a friend working at a crematorium, he learned there were at least 5,000 deaths in the city every day at peak time, but ordinary citizens would not know that.

Liu said that getting infected in itself is not that frightening as long as there is timely and proper treatment. He commented that the most terrifying thing is that the CCP only cares about its image, not people’s lives. In his apartment complex, two siblings lost both parents to the virus. “The government did not do anything about the kids,” he said.

Even the Fangcang (makeshift) hospitals were nothing like what the CCP claimed. “They built a shelter on an open field and held people who were positive as well as suspected to be positive there,” Liu recalled. “I was there, and there was no medical treatment at all. I saw many man-made tragedies.”

Endless Lies

During the past few years of zero-COVID policy, China’s economy has come to a standstill, and people’s lives have been turned upside down. Because testing and quarantining were center stage, many non-COVID patients died due to lack of access to medical care or people starved to death at home.

A fire that broke out in Urumqi, Xinjiang, on November 24, 2022, and killed more than ten people became the last straw for many people, who blamed the lockdown policy for the deadly fire. People in many places took to the streets to protest the zero-COVID policy.

Given the circumstances, on December 5 the CCP announced the end of the zero-COVID policy and the lifting of all travel restrictions. Since the regime’s algorithm that drives the propaganda machine did not change, however, people continued to hear lies.

For example, on December 16, there were 29 new cases reported in Tianjin City (a city of 13.9 million people), 54 in Shandong Province (which has population of 102 million), 42 in Henan Province (with a population of 99 million), and none in Hebei Province (with a population of 75 million).

That is why people find these numbers ridiculous. “How come there are only five cases?” asked a Liaoning Province resident after hearing there were only 5 new daily cases. “Could these five people be representatives of all those infected?”

Another netizen wrote, “This is surely a joke. If there is no news, no one needs to make it up—the weather forecast is enough.”

“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying,” another person wrote quoting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a novelist well known for exposing the Soviet Communist Party’s lies.

A Way Out

Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, wrote an article on March 19, 2020, explaining how to stay safe in the pandemic.

“Pandemics and plagues are part of a divine plan and inevitable in the course of history. When people become immoral they generate karma, become sick, and experience disastrous things. In such circumstances, people who do not believe in the divine then resort to various “measures” [or “cuo-shi” in Chinese] to try to deal with things. But the fact that “cuo-shi” is a homophone for another term in Chinese, which means “mistaken approach,” is telling.” (Stay Rational)

Having implemented different lockdown measures, many countries came to see that lockdowns were a mistaken approach to deal with the virus. They then turned to living with the virus. The CCP, however, criticized other countries for not following “science” and kept enforcing its zero-COVID policy in order to boast its superiority over other political systems. When the policy tanked the economy and triggered protests, the CCP finally had no choice but ditch the policy. With no exit plan, however, the people in China are still suffering due to surging cases and lack of medical resources.

In the same article, Mr. Li also revealed, “But a pandemic like the current Chinese Communist Virus (or “Wuhan Virus”) comes with a purpose behind it, and it has targets. It is here to weed out members of the Party and those who have sided with it.” (Stay Rational)

The pandemic is unfortunate, but it gave the Chinese people and the rest of the world an opportunity to see the CCP’s true colors. From the Great Leap Forward to the Great Famine, from the Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the persecution of Falun Gong, the regime has never stopped harming its people with brutality and lies as it erases traditional values.

This is because the core ideology of the CCP is falsehoods, evilness, and class struggle. To enforce lockdowns or not is not important for the CCP as long as the regime can maintain its control of the people and sustain its totalitarian rule. As Mr. Li pointed out, the pandemic targets CCP members and those who sided with it. The fundamental solution is to

get rid of the CCP and stop communism’s global expansion, so that society can get back on track and regain blessings.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/12/25/205352.html

China’s Zero-COVID Policy a Shield for Windfall Revenues for Local Governments, Gene Companies

Medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for the COVID-19 coronavirus, in a street in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on May 15, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Analysis

Chinese Communist Party’s Interests Hidden Behind Mass Testing and Lockdowns

David Chu

Lynn Xu

December 25, 2022 Updated: December 26, 2022

News Analysis

Two crucial pillars of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) zero-COVID  policy, intensive testing and lockdowns, have formed a huge chain of interests that have depleted the state treasury and sacrificed people’s livelihoods, according to China expert Henghe .

Since the beginning of December, China has lifted its zero-COVID restrictions and a new wave of the epidemic has broken out across the country. In Beijing, Hebei, Henan, Liaoning, Guangdong, and many other provinces and cities, the funeral industry is overloaded. Beijing Tongzhou Funeral Parlor issued a notice on Dec. 11 that it was working overtime, reported chinesecitizen.org on Dec. 22.

China’s anti-virus measures have not been effective in saving people’s lives, and the zero-COVID policy is likely an umbrella for CCP interest groups that have been scrambling to reap lucrative profits from mass mandatory testing and lockdown  curbs, according to Henghe.

Laboratory technicians work at a Covid-19 testing facility in Lianyungang in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on August 23, 2022. (AFP via Getty Images)

Nucleus Lab Reports False COVID Test Results

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in China, nucleic acid testing  has become a hot business, inevitably accompanied by problems such as falsified testing data, data errors, and lost samples.

On Nov. 25, the Health Committee of Lanzhou city, Gansu Province, issued  a notice stating that Lanzhou Nucleus Huaxi Laboratory wrongly recorded the information of individual nucleic acid testing abnormalities into the package of negative personnel and uploaded it to the system, making health codes show negative. The notice said that the lab will be heavily penalized.

Data corporation Tianyancha shows  that Lanzhou Nucleus Huaxi Laboratory, wholly owned by Shenzhen Nucleus Gene Technology, was just established on Aug. 8 and quickly entered the government-approved list of third-party nucleic acid testing organizations.

Zhang Shanshan is the supervisor of the lab, who also serves as an executive in other 38 nucleic acid testing companies.

Shenzhen Nucleus Gene Technology was founded  in April 2012 and has  79 externally controlled companies. These “Nucleus Huaxi” medical testing laboratories are widely distributed throughout China.

Lanzhou Nucleus Huaxi Laboratory is not alone. In January 2021, Jinan Huaxi had been reported for “lying about the results of nucleic acid testing”; From May to August of this year, Nucleus Huaxi in Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Changsha received warnings or was fined by the local health commission for “irregular sterilization procedures,” “using non-health technicians to perform medical work,” or other non-compliances, according  to Chinese portal site Sina.

Government-Supported Third-Party Testing Affiliates

Despite repeated problems with those nucleic acid testing facilities, their parent Shenzhen Nucleus Gene has never stopped expanding its business in the market and 2022 reaches its fastest year of growth.

As of November 2022, Shenzhen Nucleus Gene has opened 16 medical testing laboratories. November registered Xining company; October opened 8 in Zhuhai, Quanzhou, Xiamen, Yinchuan, Taiyuan, Qingdao, Dalian, and Haikou; September registered Beijing and Guizhou company, August registered Lanzhou company; May registered Inner Mongolia company, according to business registration information.

It is puzzling that a round of virus outbreaks would occur shortly after such a testing company is registered, followed by mass nucleic acid testing in the area where the company is located.

For example, Hefei Nucleon Huaxi was established  in September, and a COVID-19 outbreak occurred  in Hefei in October; Beijing Nucleon Huaxi was established on Sept. 29, and the number of outbreaks in Beijing increased gradually since October, with a sharp increase in early November; Dalian Nucleon Huaxi was registered on Oct.14, and as of Nov. 24, 67 new cases were added daily in Dalian; Taiyuan Nucleon Huaxi was established on Oct. 21, and an outbreak began in Taiyuan on Nov. 19; Xining Nucleon Huaxi was established on Nov. 12, and the number of confirmed cases in Xining increased rapidly soon after.

Is it a coincidence that a local outbreak closely follows the registration of the nucleic acid testing facility?

Industry insiders speculated that Shenzhen Nucleus Gene may be deeply tied to the interests of local authorities, as the nucleic acid testing business is not as simple as just registering a company, but requires third-party testing permission from the local government, and finally, so-called bidding procedures and announcements.

With the aid of official support, Shenzhen Nucleus Gene uses a franchise model to enable its dozens of testing facilities to sprawl over China.

According to Chinese medial media OFweek , as of March 9, 2020, Shenzhen Nucleus Gene had 450 million yuan ($64 million) worth of nucleic acid testing revenue, while on Nov. 25 of this year, the gene company said it has completed 700 million nucleic acid tests and is preparing to launch an IPO.

Based on the current minimum price, 5 yuan ($0.72) per person for pooled sample testing, if Shenzhen Nucleus Gene does all pooled sample testing, the revenue generated by 700 million visits could reach 3.5 billion yuan ($504 million), a record-breaking lucrative profit in the medical testing industry.

An epidemic control worker wears PPE to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as he gives a nucleic acid test to a resident as others wait in line wearing face shields before leaving by bus from an area with communities in lockdown in Beijing, China, on Nov. 30, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Huge Profit Chain Behind Nucleic Acid Testing Industry

“Mass nucleic acid testing is linked with a huge chain of interests,” Lai Jianping, a Master of International Law at China University, told The Epoch Times in May.

According  to data by the National Health Commission, the number of nucleic acid testing laboratories soared more than tenfold, or 13,100 in April 2022 from 2,081 in March 2020 amid the zero-COVID policy, with a testing capacity of 51.65 million tubes per day. The new polymerase chain reaction testing laboratories climbed to roughly 11,000, more than six times that in March 2020.

The three-year draconian zero-COVID policy has placed almost all the Chinese industries in the doldrums, except for the nucleic acid testing industry, which has become so profitable that many testing companies seek to go public.

The first three quarters of 2022 saw 109 listed nucleic acid testing companies, with total revenue of about 363 billion yuan (about $50 billion), an increase of about 22 percent over the same period last year; net profits totaled about 85 billion yuan (about $11 billion), a 34 percent rise over the same period last year, according  to Chinese portal site Sina.

Special Government Bonds for Building Mobile Cabin Hospitals

On Nov. 26, Shandong provincial news media reported  a special bond issuance program for building a mobile cabin hospital in Haiyang city, Shandong Province, in March.

The project defined “the next five years as a period of epidemic.” A large sum of 120 million yuan ($16 million) will be invested in the entire cabin isolation project, with 24 million yuan ($3 million) to be raised by the local government and the remaining 96 million yuan ($13 million) to be raised in public through the issuance of special government bonds.

The cabin is estimated to quarantine an average of 100 people per day. The total revenue of the project will be 240 million yuan ($34 million) and the investment ratio will be more than two times, the report said.

A special bond is a project that a local government plans to build but lacks the funds to do so, so it uses the government’s credit as an endorsement to finance the project. In addition, special bonds are included in the government fund budget and are not included in the budget deficit.

Not only Haiyang city, Shandong Province’s other cities also issued special bonds to build mobile cabin hospitals for isolation use during the COVID-19 epidemic.

For example, Taian municipal authority approved  on March 26 to launch 229 million yuan ($31 million) of government bonds, about 80 percent of the total investment, in support of a 40-acre, four-story mobile cabin hospital; Yantai city government will issue  100 million yuan (approximately $13 million) worth of government bonds, accounting for 79.6 percent of the total funds, to build a 1,734-room mobile hospital; Longkou city intended  to finance the construction of a 120,000 square meter (129,1669 square foot) mobile isolation hospital with 234 million yuan (approximately $32 million) in local government bonds, making up 78 percent of the total funds.

According  to a Nov. 29 report of Sina, Shandong Province has issued more than 15 billion yuan ($2.08 billion) in special bonds for the construction of permanent mobile cabin hospitals and isolation sites, with nearly 90 percent of the projects completing construction within a year.

A common feature of these special bond projects is that the project sponsors defined the next five years as an epidemic period.

Han Bing, a law professor at Renmin University denounced the situation on Weibo , a Twitter-like Chinese social media, saying: “Is it crazy? How can [one] count on an epidemic to end when making mobile cabin hospitals becomes an industry?”

A medical staff member treats a patient infected by the COVID-19 coronavirus at Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on March 11, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Nationwide Quarantine Sites

Large-scale projects for mobile cabin hospitals and isolation sites were in full swing across the country in May when Ma Xiaowei, director of the National Health Commission, published  an op-ed in the party magazine “Qiushi,” claiming to speed up preparations for permanent mobile cabin hospitals and centralized isolation sites.

Shangqiu, central Henan Province, has become the first city in China to publicly respond to the construction of a permanent cabin hospital, with the first phase costing 135 million yuan (about $18.67 million) to build 1,000 new isolation sites.

On May 7, a 4,000-bed mobile hospital was built in the Zhengzhou Airport region. On July 6, the Hohhot Health Care Commission issued a project announcement for the construction of a 55,861 square meter (601,282 square foot) mobile hospital and related facilities with an investment of 80 million yuan (approximately $11 million).

On Oct. 20, Lanzhou started the construction of two cabin hospitals at the same time, providing a total of more than 4,000 isolation beds and a total construction area of 28,000 square meters (301,389 square feet).

Shanghai municipal government and state-owned builder China Communications Construction Corp. signed a 1.38-billion-yuan ($191 million) contract to build a 3,250-bed cabin hospital on Fuxing island near Huangpu River on Oct. 19, Reuters reported .

On Nov. 23, a mobile cabin hospital was officially put into operation in Beijing.

Chongqing has built the largest hospital in the region with a total of 26,313 beds, according  to China News on Nov. 22.

An official notice circulating online showed  that Guangdong Province’s Huilai county, Shenquan township sent an emergency notice saying that in order to implement the requirement that “each county must build a mobile cabin hospital” All graves within the area of Shennong village were required to be relocated, requiring grave owners or their relatives to complete the relocation of graves within 2 days, otherwise the graves will be treated as no-owners and all consequences and responsibilities will be borne by themselves.

There are 122 districts and counties in Guangdong, which means that 122 cabin hospitals are to be built.

Mobile hospital construction is a huge, not a one-time industry investment, and will produce operating and management costs.

Wuhan resident Zhang Hai told  the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times on Nov. 23 that he suffered a lot from the mandatory testing and harsh lockdown measures, saying that “since the authorities spent the money to build those quarantine sites, they must send people in. Otherwise, how can they explain to the top where the money goes? That’s why some paid to get people into the cabin hospital.”

Large-scale nucleic acid testing and cabin isolation has become the fiscal revenue of the local government, “in this case, how can the CCP authorities make it easy to end an epidemic that can reap benefits for them?” Zhang questioned.

“The people who have the power to decide to build the quarantine sites, including the constructors themselves, all have a stake in it. In the three years of the epidemic, those doing nucleic acid testing, selling masks, and selling protective clothing have all made fortunes.”

The investment in building mobile hospitals is enormous, and those involved will be thinking about making more money or at least recouping their costs, Zhang added.

David Chu is a London-based journalist who has been working in the financial sector for almost 30 years in major cities in China and abroad, including South Korea, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries. He was born in a family specializing in Traditional Chinese Medicine and has a background in ancient Chinese literature.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-zero-covid-policy-a-shield-for-windfall-revenues-for-local-governments-gene-companies_4942974.html

China Trolls the World

WHO team members Marion Koopmans (L), Peter Daszak (3rd R), and Peter Ben Embarek (2nd R) pose for a picture in Wuhan, a city in central China’s Hubei Province on Feb. 10, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Thinking About China

Jeffrey A. Tucker

December 26, 2022

Commentary

And then just like that, COVID controls are gone in China . So far as we can tell, it has all come to an end, without explanation and of course without apology. For almost 3 years now, China has faced random and draconian lockdowns and testing requirements, complete with extreme quarantines, all based on the myth that a respiratory pathogen can be controlled by a powerful government.

In many ways, Chinese leader Xi Jinping regarded his use of these methods as his greatest triumph. He punished people in the CCP  who raised doubts. He incentivized many local officials to lie about cases and deaths. He bragged publicly and privately about his glorious achievement. All except for one thing: it didn’t actually work.

So far as we can tell, the policy end was forced on Xi because it became too expensive. Local governments were running out of money for mass and frequent testing. The population was becoming very restless, even protesting in the streets, which is risky in China beyond anything people in the West can imagine.

Plus, it’s possible that Xi feels politically safe enough to do this now, whereas he did not six months ago. In addition, even if he cannot claim to have stopped COVID, he can at least take credit for having trolled the entire planet Earth to destroy their own economies. Even if China’s GDP took a huge hit, he inspired most governments of the world to undermine human rights, violate privacy, engage in massive censorship, and demoralize their populations.

The trolling began in January 2020 with a series of fake videos that gave a wildly incorrect impression of the deadliness of the disease. Bots were spamming the world with videos of people dropping dead in the streets, hospitals overwhelmed, and terror in the population. The gullible West believed it all and began to prepare for the onslaught in case the virus made its way here, which it did.

Then the CCP locked down Wuhan for a few weeks and claimed that it had magically made the virus disappear. It invited a delegation from the World Health Organization, which came to Wuhan and other countries in mid-February. Among them were representatives from the United States, UK, and Europe. They released a disgusting report  that said:

“ Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities. Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.

“At the individual level, the Chinese people have reacted to this outbreak with courage and conviction. They have accepted and adhered to the starkest of containment measures—whether the suspension of public gatherings, the month-long ‘stay at home’ advisories or prohibitions on travel. Throughout an intensive 9-days of site visits across China, in frank discussions from the level of local community mobilizers and frontline health care providers to top scientists, Governors and Mayors, the Joint Mission was struck by the sincerity and dedication that each brings to this COVID-19  response.”

Those words are nothing short of treason. And the United States signed off on it, as if the lying Communist Party knew more about mitigating a respiratory pathogen, a mild one for most of the population, better than trained scientists in the U.S. who had actually studied this. Anthony Fauci’s own deputy assistant was on the trip and bragged about the China response. This favorable report echoed the previous words of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the WHO who had told  the world that China is “setting a new standard.”

In a matter of weeks, most of the world had adopted the tactics of destruction that China itself has now abandoned. And what do the disease mitigators have to say for themselves now? They are trying to pretend like it never happened, even as whole social orders have been traumatized beyond anything previously imaginable.

And what of China today? The whole population has a vast immunity debt to pay, which will mean massive sickness for the better part of a year. You might say: oh this was smart because now the variant on the loose in the world is more mild. But please get this straight: what is a mild versus what is a serious variant is largely contingent on pre-existing and acquired immunity. A pathogen that you and I might shake off in a day or two could kill a member of a native tribe in an Amazon rainforest who had never been previously exposed.

So after two years of trying to suppress this virus, China is going to face a very hard time in the coming year. But of course under the Chinese political system, no one will pay the price for this economic and public health disaster. Xi and the CCP will continue to rule and pretend that they did everything right.

One might think that this situation would amount to a complete humiliation for the likes of Fauci and the NIH, not to mention dozens of U.S. agencies that were involved in this fiasco, to say nothing of the hundreds of governments around the world that went along with the ridiculous and evil CCP methods of virus control. But we are not seeing it, and that is simply because the whole of the Western media played along with this and denounced anyone who resisted the absurdities.

Not only that: Xi and the CCP have managed to bring practices to the West with which we have been previously unfamiliar. Only three years ago, a person in a mask would have been regarded as a danger and probably a robber. No one ever wore them but perhaps crazy people or surgeons standing over open bodies, or perhaps miners wanting to filter the air. Regular people would never wear a mask in the normal course of life. Somehow we survived.

But today, we see between 10 and 50 percent of the population masking up despite the lack of any evidence that they achieve anything to stop the spread of a respiratory pathogen. Not to put too fine a point on it but the holes in the mask are vastly larger than the virus itself. Wearing them is nothing short of a superstition and a tacit homage to Xi Jinping. It is not the way of the West!

Also we are careening fast into a world of vaccine passports. Why do you suppose that the United States retains them for visitors from other countries? It is because certain elites want to hold on to some vestige of control in hopes of implementing them here on the way toward a China-style social credit system. This is also why social media censorship survives everywhere except Twitter among the major platforms.

Despite all the failures, the CCP has something to be proud of from its COVID response. It utterly and completely flopped as a measure to control a virus but it did troll the entire planet earth but for a few nations to go along with its totalitarian measures, thus reducing economic growth for the whole world and giving China a leg up in its struggle to be the world’s leading superpower. The complete failure of a policy then becomes its greatest moment of success.

And even today, we see nothing like honesty from any ruling-class elites on what they did to freedom here and all over the world. Meanwhile, China seems to have given up its battle for Zero COVID, just washing its hands of the whole operation as if it never happened. Very clever.

We in the West need to get wise as to what happened. There should be hearings and some kind of justice for those who went along. We need retractions of lying interviews and articles plus some kind of coming to terms instead of continued coverup about what happened. Finally, we need the complete elimination of all censorship and controls that came about over three years. The only way to beat tyranny is with the practice of freedom. We need to embrace that now before it is too late.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute , and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Website

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-trolls-the-world_4943740.html

The CCP’s Pandemic Propaganda Collapses as China’s Infections and Deaths Peak

Medical staff moves a patient into a fever clinic at Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, China on Dec. 13, 2022. (Reuters TV via Reuters)

Analysis

David Chu

Kane Zhang

Raven Wu

December 27, 2022

News Analysis

As the COVID-19 (CCP Virus) pandemic  continues to spread in China with soaring numbers of cases and deaths, the United States and Germany have offered to provide vaccines to China to help it fight the scourge; but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has refused help, saying that China is handling the pandemic well. Critics have pointed out that accepting Western aid would expose the fallacies in the CCP’s propaganda about the superiority of its so-called “whole nation” system and “one-party governance” model.

On Dec. 20, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a press conference that the United States is willing to support countries around the world, including China, through vaccines and other relevant support. The following day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning responded that China’s current vaccine booster efforts are proceeding in an orderly manner and that the drugs and testing reagents are generally sufficient to meet demand.

This is not the first time the U.S. government has offered assistance. On Dec. 14, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told a press conference that the United States was willing to help China through this wave of COVID outbreaks. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded that the CCP’s “whole nation system” is a superior governance model and will be able to weather the peak of the pandemic smoothly.

China’s Pandemic Peaks as Authorities Refuse to Accept Western Aid

The Chinese National Health Commission held an internal meeting on the afternoon of Dec. 21. The minutes of the meeting said that the number of new infections in the country on the 20th was 36,996,400, which accounted for 2.62 percent of the total population, and that the cumulative number of infections from Dec. 1 to 20 reached 248 million, which is 17.56 percent of the total population. The minutes also indicated that among the 31 provincial administrative regions, Beijing and Sichuan ranked as the top two hotspots, with the cumulative infection rate exceeding 50 percent.  Infection rates of 20-50 percent were found in Tianjin, Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Anhui, Gansu, and Hebei provinces.

People wait for medical attention at Fever Clinic area in Tongren Hospital in the Changning district in Shanghai, on Dec. 23, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

The CCP-controlled state media, China Youth Daily, reported on Dec. 7 that Feng Zijian, former deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, predicted that when the impact of the first wave of a large-scale pandemic reaches its peak, the infection rate of the population will reach about 60 percent (which would be 840 million people in China), with a gradual decline to a stable period. Eventually, 80-90 percent of the population may experience infection.

The World Health Organization ( WHO ) said in June this year that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in the United States are about 95 percent effective. At a critical time when the pandemic is spreading rapidly in China, Chinese vaccines offer little protection against COVID, and drugs are scarce. So why would the CCP reject the U.S. proposal to help fight the pandemic?

Commentator Li Linyi told the Epoch Times on Dec. 20 that the CCP knows that western vaccines are more effective than Chinese vaccines, but still refuses to allow Chinese people to be vaccinated with foreign vaccines.

He said: “This is a matter of institutional dispute. The authorities have been advocating that the Chinese system is superior to the Western system, so once they accept western vaccines and western ideals about fighting the pandemic, it becomes clear that the Chinese system is inferior to others. This is an attack on the legitimacy of the Chinese regime. Therefore, the authorities would rather let people receive inferior vaccines—even if it results in more deaths—than let the Chinese people question the legitimacy of the CCP’s totalitarian rule.”

People Caught Off Guard by the CCP’s Sudden Reversal of Extreme Lockdowns

Over the past two years, the CCP’s state media have heavily criticized and mocked the United States for “incompetence” in the fight against COVID-19. In October of this year, Xinhua, the major CCP state media, published an article titled “The U.S. incompetence in pandemic prevention leaves behind endless risks and dangers.”

Now, not only has the CCP suddenly chosen the path of living with the virus—which it previously denounced and did its best to vilify—but has also failed to make any arrangements or preparations before making a 180-degree turn in terms of policy, which caught people off guard. In December, Guangdong, Anhui, Guizhou, Shandong, and Fujian provinces mobilized retired medical personnel and medical trainees to return to the front lines to fight the pandemic. Many hospitals in Beijing, Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing, and Jilin asked their medical staff to stay on the job and if they became ill, to return to work as soon as symptoms disappeared, even if they still tested positive for COVID-19. The entire country and its medical system were totally unprepared for the recent outbreak after nearly three years of propaganda declaring the superiority of pandemic prevention in China. Some hospitals say that the real peak has not yet arrived.

In the absence of transparent information, people in China are in a panic, scrambling to buy rapid antigen tests, and fever-reducing drugs, such as, ibuprofen. At the same time, canned yellow peaches and fresh lemons, which are rumored in China to alleviate the symptoms of COVID-19, were also snapped up by the people. The people were simply grabbing any life-saving straw they could find in fear and for peace of mind.

The Central News Agency in Taiwan reported on Dec. 16 that the rush for drugs in mainland China has spread outside the country. The media in various countries have reported waves of expatriate Chinese buying drugs en masse, and Japan and Taiwan have started to impose purchase limits for certain essential drugs. In Hong Kong, Macau, and Australia, painkillers and antipyretics were bought in large numbers, and shortages occurred, forcing the pharmacies to impose restrictions on purchases.

Heng He, a China expert, told the Epoch Times on Dec. 22 that the CCP’s sudden reversal of its extreme lockdowns illustrates the failure of the three-year zero-COVID policy. The CCP already caused one wave of disasters when it locked down the country, and now the reopening has caused another wave of suffering for people. “Both approaches,” he said, “were not based on science, but on political necessity.” The Chinese people were caught off guard by the CCP’s unpredictable policies.

The CCP Contradicts Itself in its Propaganda

It is paradoxical that the CCP has promoted the superiority of a “nationwide system,” meaning that under its authoritarian rule, the country is always unified on any particular agenda, which is pandemic control in this case. However, with the outbreaks and the failed zero-COVID policy, such superiority appears to be pure fantasy. While Western countries, such as, the United States and the UK, have chosen to live with the virus and gradually open up to allow people to return to a normal life, the CCP has fiercely opposed living with the virus, implementing a strict zero-COVID policy and elevating it to a battle over ideology and political system.

Speaking to the Epoch Times on Dec. 17, Ji Da, a China expert living in the United States, said that the CCP was trying to prove that its socialist system was superior to the Western capitalist system by achieving zero-COVID at all costs. However, out of fear of the White Paper Movement and the protests, the regime lifted the lockdowns overnight without making any prior arrangements or preparations, catching both the zero-COVID and “coexistence” factions off guard. Due to the shortage of medical supplies, people everywhere were panic buying and hoarding them in order to protect themselves.

The regime has always claimed that its one-party system is best-suited to combat the pandemic, but the rest of the world has taken a contrary view. Craig Singleton, deputy director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that accepting Western aid would not only embarrass the Chinese authorities but also undermine their propaganda about the supposed superiority of the CCP’s model of governance.

David Chu is a London-based journalist who has been working in the financial sector for almost 30 years in major cities in China and abroad, including South Korea, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries. He was born in a family specializing in Traditional Chinese Medicine and has a background in ancient Chinese literature.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-ccps-pandemic-propaganda-collapses-as-chinas-infections-and-deaths-peak_4947533.html

Reject the Chinese Communist Party to Stay Safe in the Pandemic

Dec. 29, 2022 | By Chuan Ren from China

(Minghui.org) The coronavirus, also known as the CCP virus (after the Chinese Communist Party), has once again ravaged China since the CCP abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy. Minutes from a meeting of China’s National Health Commission on December 21 verified that 248 million people were infected between December 1 and 20 alone. Zhejiang Province announced on December 25 that over one million people (or 1.5% of its population of 65 million) were infected on that day.

Other areas that saw a surge in cases included Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou (in Zhejiang Province), Nanjing (in Jiangsu Province), Chengdu (in Sichuan Province), Henan Province, and Hebei Province. An increasing number of people who tested positive had lung infections (commonly known as “white lungs”), which generally mean higher mortality rates. Hospitals and crematories in many cities are under enormous strain.

Many people in China are worried and anxiously looking for ways to stay healthy. In the face of the pandemic, Falun Dafa practitioners have been telling people how to stay safe and healthy by identifying with Falun Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and rejecting the CCP.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, teaches people to live by the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. The practice also includes five exercises (learnfalundafa.org). Untold numbers Falun Dafa practitioners have seen their health restored and their character improve by following its teachings.

Many non-practitioners have also been blessed by condemning the CCP’s persecution of Falun Dafa and reciting the auspicious phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” Many examples of this phenomenon from many different countries have been documented on Minghui.

Some people doubt that simply by reciting Falun Dafa’s auspicious phrases and rejecting the CCP, one can ward off the virus. We’d like to explain it based on modern science.

Health and Cultivation Systems

With a diameter of 100 nanometers (or 0.0001 millimeter), coronaviruses are much smaller than human cells. The genetic material of RNA is tightly packed into the center of the virus, surrounded by a shell consisting of a membrane, an envelope, and a spike.

UV light is known to weaken the virus. With a wavelength of 10 – 400 nanometers, UV light can damage the genetic information stored in RNA, thus inactivating the virus. In addition, UV light is also known to affect protein structure, making it non-functional.

Similarly, qigong and other Chinese medicine systems can have the same effect as UV light. These systems regulate the circulation of energy in the body to improve health and fend off illnesses. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, explains:

“The energy of this matter is activated in the human body through cultivation. Its activation changes the body’s physical condition and can have the effect of producing healing and health.…

“There’s a saying, “Broadly shines a Buddha’s light, setting everything right.” It means that people who truly cultivate carry immense energy in their bodies. Wherever those persons go, any abnormal condition within the area covered by their energy can be corrected and restored to normal,” Mr. Li continued. “For instance, sickness in the body really is an abnormal bodily state, and the sickness will disappear after that state is corrected.” (Chapter 1, Falun Gong)

This is consistent with different cultivation systems throughout history. The finger bones of Buddha Sakyamuni in Shaanxi Province look like white jade and attest to the existence of high-energy matter. In Jiuhua Mountain in Anhui Province, monks’ bodies have been preserved for hundreds of years.

How to Keep from Getting Ill

Maintaining high moral values helps keep one from getting ill. “When a person has righteous qi (energy) residing inside, no viciousness is able to invade,” according to the classic Chinese medicine book Huangdi Neijing (The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor).

But such a tradition has been largely wiped out by the CCP since it seized power in 1949. With a core ideology of falsehoods, evilness, and class struggle, the CCP launched numerous political campaigns to pit one group of people against another. In addition, the CCP systematically suppressed traditional values during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and freedom in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.

After being introduced to the public in 1992, Falun Dafa has not only improved the health and moral standards of its practitioners but has also benefited society at large. Jealous of its popularity, however, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide campaign to wipe out Falun Dafa in July 1999. Tens of millions of practitioners have been discriminated against for their faith. Untold numbers of them have been arrested, detained, imprisoned, and tortured (including by being made to do forced labor, being mentally and physically abused, and even becoming victims of forced organ harvesting).

Siding with the CCP to do bad deeds will lead to consequences such as poor health, ailments, and other problems. By supporting innocent practitioners and reciting “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,” a person aligns him or herself with traditional values and will be rewarded with health.

As Falun Dafa’s founder Mr. Li wrote:

“Truth be told, pandemics only come when people’s morals and values have turned bad and they have come to have a massive amount of karma....

“But a pandemic like the current Chinese Communist Virus (or “Wuhan Virus”) comes with a purpose behind it, and it has targets. It is here to weed out members of the Party and those who have sided with it.” (“Stay Rational”)

That is, rejecting the CCP and embracing traditional values will help us stay healthy and safe.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/12/29/205417.html

How to Stay Safe in China’s COVID Tsunami

Dec. 30, 2022 | By Shan Guo

(Minghui.org) The infection cases have exploded in China since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy on December 7, 2022. This tsunami of a pandemic is much worse than two previous waves of the pandemic, the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.

First Wave

After SARS broke out in southern Guangdong Province in November 2002, it quickly spread up north to Beijing. Then top CCP leader Jiang Zemin decided to block the information. “If we can still maintain stability and prosperity, 2 million deaths are worth it,” he said according to The Real Story of China’s Jiang Zemin. Although Jiang Yanyong, a retired surgeon from the People’s Liberation Army’s Hospital 301, issued a statement about the outbreak to the media, he was quickly silenced and penalized according to military regulations.

Luo Gan and Wu Guanzheng, two members of the CCP’s Central Politburo Standing Committee, who were heavily involved in the persecution of Falun Gong, were both infected in April 2003. Jiang Zemin moved his entire family to Shanghai and ordered, “We must defend Shanghai with our lives.”

Although many people in Shanghai were infected, the CCP maintained due to political reasons, that the city only had two cases. Local residents dismissed that. “That is a joke,” one netizen wrote. “There are already five infected in my apartment complex.”

Second Wave

The CCP locked down Wuhan on January 23, 2020, and notified the world of the COVID-19 outbreak. This day coincided with the 19th anniversary of Jiang’s regime staging the so-called self-immolation incident on Tiananmen Square in 2001 to defame Falun Gong. Within four months, the disease spread to the whole world with 5.4 million infections and 342,000 deaths by May 23, 2020.

Like SARS, the CCP again covered up the disease and censored information. The official death toll in Wuhan stood at 2,531 as of March 25, 2020, but the actual fatalities estimated based on cremations and urns distributed during that time could be at least 10 times higher.

Third Wave

We are now experiencing the third wave. During the Liaoning Province pandemic prevention and control meeting on December 20, mayors from all 14 cities provided updates of their local COVID situations. About 50% of Shenyang residents were said to be infected, and this number could reach 80% by January, including four counties under its administration. In addition, 80% of Shenyang government employees had been infected and only 12% were still working.

Other areas in China are facing a similar situation. The Zhejiang Health Commission reported on December 25 that the number of infections had reached one million, and the daily new cases were increasing at a rate of 10%. Similarly, at least 500,000 infection cases had been found in Qingdao City of Shandong Province. Tang Weiguo, the founder of Shanghai Kehua Bio-Engineering, a manufacturer of the rapid test kits, died of COVID at age 66 on December 25.

After China’s National Health Commission (NHC) changed the disease name from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection” on December 26, Zhang Liang, a physician in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province told Radio Free Asia on the same day that the number of infections was extremely high, with 80 – 90% of local residents already infected. This figure is consistent with the prediction from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Washington University, which estimated that China could see as high as 4.6 million daily infections by March 1, 2023.

Even Hong Kong had 20,865 new cases on December 28 according to Central News Agency, among which 1,176 were imported. Italy, the European country that was hit hard by the first wave in February 2020, mandated COVID testing on December 26 for travelers from China. On two such flights that were checked at Milan Malpensa Airport, half of the Chinese passengers tested positive.

Continued Cover-up

Although the CCP claimed the new COVID surge was caused by the omicron variant, many people doubted that. Netizen Jinse Huanian wrote on December 26 that she treated 29 patients in six hours at a fever clinic. Twenty-one of them were hospitalized. Moreover, all 22 patients who went through CT scans were found to have pneumonia. This means that the symptoms were not caused by the mild omicron variant that attacks the upper respiratory tract.

Song, a doctor in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, said on December 27 that almost all patients he saw had pneumonia. His department director told employees that such lung damage was alarming, since it was not a flu or upper respiratory tract infection. The symptoms also varied, from aching to the bone all over, to sore throats that prevented drinking or eating. Some also had difficulty breathing.

One netizen learned from a pathological friend in Beijing that many original variants were found in recent infections. As a result, many cases of white lung damage were seen in youth and middle-aged patients. Without genetic sequencing, however, it is hard to determine the exact strain.

Regardless of the symptoms, however, doctors were instructed to avoid diagnosing patients with “pneumonia,” wrote a netizen in a Twitter post on December 28 with the hashtag of @wuwenhang.

In response to this crisis, the United States is actively monitoring the COVID variants to be prepared for a possible crisis. This includes tracking inbound travelers and following up on mutants.

China is Unique in Pandemic

COVID-19 started in China, spreading worldwide and causing huge losses, and is now surging in China again, more rampant and lethal.

China is unique in this pandemic also because the CCP regime has always covered up the real situation and censored information, from the First Wave to the Second Wave to the current Third Wave. This is not accidental, because of the CCP’s track record of lies and brutality since it took power in 1949.

Since the totalitarian regime does not care about people’s lives, it enforced a military-style lockdown for the past three years until it could not hold it any longer due to public anger. Once loosening it up, however, about 250 million people were infected in the first three weeks of December.

There is an ancient saying that “plague has eyes.” Since its beginning, the disease has targeted CCP members and those who closely followed the regime.

Staying Safe in the Unpredictable Pandemic

Like other disasters, plagues have accompanied human history for thousands of years. Plagues usually happen when society loses its moral compass and persecutes good people. The ancient Roman Empire, for instance, was weakened by numerous plagues amid the persecution of Christians and eventually collapsed.

The same thing happened to China, a land with a 5,000-year-long history where virtue was cherished. But with the indoctrination of communism since the CCP came to power, China has also gone through unprecedented cultural and social destruction. After ravaging Paris in the French Revolution and destroying the Soviet Union with massive killings, communism brought more harm to China. This includes the deaths of at least 45 million citizens in the Great Famine, systematic cultural destruction during the Cultural Revolution, suppression of the democratic movement in the Tiananmen Massacre, and the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

Despite the CCP’s brutality and lies, Falun Gong practitioners have never stopped following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be good citizens. The mind and body improvement practice brought hope to Chinese society and beyond. But the CCP’s core ideology of falsehoods, evilness, and class struggle totally goes against Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. In the past 23 years, tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners, along with their family members, were discriminated against for their faith. A large number were detained, imprisoned, and tortured, with many being subjected to forced labor, mental abuse, and even forced organ harvesting.

As the CCP is actively pushing the communist agenda in China and globally, however, many people have been misled by its censored information, including the defamatory propaganda against innocent Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP was plunging our society into an abyss even before the pandemic.

Three years of a pandemic have resulted in 663 million infections, 6.7 million deaths, and immeasurable social and financial losses. It is time to learn the lesson, reject the CCP, and follow our conscience for a better, safer tomorrow.

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2022/12/30/205554.html