Last Updated on March 22, 2020
According to an article posted in Yahoo, local residents and whistleblowers have signaled China’s reports of their stunning coronavirus recovery are not to be trusted.
China’s handling of the Covid-19 in its early days has been called into question as a lack of transparency and overwhelming censorship to keep the lid on the emergence of a SARS-like virus in Wuhan was revealed to a global audience.
The now-deceased doctor who alerted a WeChat group of medical professionals of patients with SARS-like symptoms, was reprimanded with the equivalent of a misdemeanor and a gag order after authorities intervened, claiming that the medical professional had been disseminating false rumors.
A Chinese inquiry has now exonerated the late Dr Wenliang Li.
A report from Caixan found that some companies appeared to be fudging reports and cooking books to give the illusion of business as usual.
The Week reported:
But civil servants tell Caixan that businesses are actually faking these numbers. Beijing had started checking Zhejiang businesses’ electricity consumption levels, so district officials ordered the companies to start leaving their lights and machinery on all day to drive the numbers up, one civil servant said. Businesses have reportedly falsified staff attendance logs as well — they “would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials,” Caixan writes.
In Wuhan, officials have tried to make it appear that recovery efforts are going smoothly. But when “central leaders” personally survey disinfecting regimens and food delivery, local officials “make a special effort” for them and them alone, one resident told Caixan. And in a video circulating on social media, residents can be seen shouting at visiting leaders from the apartments where they’re being quarantined — “Fake, it’s all fake.”
On February 20, Business Insider reported on 5 high-profile whistleblowers who had either been arrested, silenced, or vanished.
These dissident voices who have vented their frustrations at the Chinese government have had their views throttled.
A high-profile tycoon vanished, according to the Daily Mail, after calling President Xi “a clown” after the way the country had dealt with the coronavirus.
Now, China, in some instances, appears to be apportioning the blame to other countries following their reported recovery.
