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Ming Pao reported that, according to sources in Beijing, the Wuhan Coronavirus information was reported to the top leaders in early January, but both the Central leader and local leaders didn’t take enough action.

• At the end of December 2019, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was involved.
• In early January, China’s CDC reported to the National Health Committee and top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
• On January 6, Gao Fu, head of China’s CDC, requested CDC to start a level II emergency response.
• On January 7, at the CCP Politburo Standing Committee meeting (coronavirus was not the main topic), Central leaders requested to pay attention on the prevention, but also requested not to create fear that would impact the festival mood of the people celebrating the upcoming Chinese New Year. Hubei and Wuhan didn’t take severe actions.
• On January 20, Zhong Nanshan stated that the virus could be transmitted from person to person, but it took three days for Hubei and Wuhan to decide to lock down these cities.

Related posting on Chinascope:

• Lack of Action: “Voice of China” Internally Reported Up About Coronavirus on Jan 1

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As many provinces are hesitant to resume production out of fear of the coronavirus infection, two provinces in China, Jiangxi and Guizhou, have started working on fully resuming production.

On February 13, after Xi Jinping warned that excessive measures to contain the coronavirus could harm the economy, Jiangxi, a neighboring province of Hubei, called for combining the epidemic prevention efforts and resuming production efforts together. The Paper reported that it is the first province that has tried to resume production. It issued an order on February 16 that businesses do not need to apply for approval to resume production; employees returning to work do not need to provide health certificates; and employees, if not from Hubei province, do not need to be quarantined.

By February 16, Guizhou had removed 1,976 epidemic testing check points including 467 check points on highways. Among its 96 counties and districts (inside major cities), 41 had restored public transit and taxi services and 21 counties had restored intra-province bus services.

[Editor’s Note: Jiangxi Provincial Party Secretary Liu Qi served under Xi when Xi was Zhejiang Provincial Party Secretary. Three previous Guizhou Party Secretaries were Li Zhanshu (Head of People’s Congress), Zhao Kezhi (Minister of Public Security), and Chen Min’er. They were either Xi’s close allies or his subordinates.]

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Leadership: Xi Not Happy with Tough Measures to Contain Coronavirus That Harm Economy
• Local Government: Confiscating Each Other’s Medical Supplies

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Caixin is a Beijing-based media group providing financial and business news and information. It was founded in 2010 by Hu Shuli (胡舒立), who was known for her outspoken style.

On February 13, Caixin published an article questioning the accuracy of the officially reported Wuhan infection count. It stated, “How many people have been infected with the novel coronavirus in Wuhan is a mystery.” “Chen Yixin, Deputy Director of the Central government’s epidemic control leading group, pointed out that we should have a clear understanding of the uncertainty of the Wuhan epidemic. The base of Wuhan’s infected patients has not been collected and there is no precise estimate of the scale of the spread either. Some related offices have estimated that the potential infection count at Wuhan may possibly be very high.”

It then quoted a paper on medRxiv which stated that the conservative estimate would be 54,000 infected and the high estimate would be 90,000. According to China’s official number, as of February 13, Wuhan had 32,994 infection cases.

[Editor’s Note: It is rare to see Caixin, a Chinese media, questioning the official number. Its estimate may not mean much as it still faces political constraint on how high a number it can report.]

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Infection Count: Official Numbers Do Not Include Asymptomatic Infections
• Infection Count: Wuhan Epidemic Control Command Center Ordered 100,000 Patient Beds

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On February 14, 2020, after the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Party Committee issued a “Wartime Status Order” and called for “political security” and “information security,” the Beijing Medical Association, the Beijing Medical Doctor’s Association, and the Beijing Preventive Medical Association jointly issued a proposal to “protect the privacy of the patients and their families.”

Related posting on Chinascope:

• On February 13, Beijing CDC Issued a “Wartime Status Order”

Source: Beijing News, February 14, 2020
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/02/14/689404.html

Several media in China have voiced subtle differences in tone from the main theme that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee have voiced. However small these voices are, they show that the party lacks unity.

People’s Daily: A February 10 Twitter message pointed out that People’s Daily mobile APP had a very interesting design on that day: It had a picture of Xi Jinping visiting the Beijing local community for epidemic control, sandwiched between a text that read, “Go to Wuhan” (on the top) with a big banner, “Go to Wuhan” (at the bottom).

Article link: https://twitter.com/LifetimeUSCN/status/1226859830977019905?s=19.

China Global Television Network (CGTN): It reported that “five suns” had appeared in the sky in Inner Mongolia. In traditional Chinese culture, this was a terrible sign for the current leader. It meant that multiple people would start to challenge the leader or even declare themselves as the new “kings.” (Of course, CGTN only called it an optical phenomenon without touching the ancient Chinese interpretation.) Article link: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-16/-Five-suns-appear-in-China-s-Inner-Mongolia-O7So2eq9oY/index.html.

Caixin, a Beijing-based media group established in 2010 by Hu Shuli (胡舒立), who was known for his outspoken style: Has had an article on the Internet since January 27, 2020. In the article, the Wuhan Mayor, Zhou Xianwang, said he reported the coronavirus epidemic to Beijing in December 2019 but was not “authorized” to reveal the information to the public until January 20, 2020. Article link: http://china.caixin.com/2020-01-27/101508817.html. Related Chinascope posting: Leadership: Wuhan Mayor Not “Authorized” to Release Epidemic Information to the Public Before.

Caixin: Since February 13, it has kept an article on its website questioning the official Infection count in Wuhan. Article link: http://www.caixin.com/2020-02-13/101515147.html. Related Chinascope posting: Infection Count: Caixin Questioned Wuhan Infection Number on February 13.

Beijing News, a Beijing-based newspaper: Has kept an article on its website since January 27, 2020. It is similar to Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang’s story that he was not “authorized” to reveal the information to the public before January 20, 2020. Article link: http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/01/27/680293.html. Related Chinascope posting: Leadership: Wuhan Mayor Not “Authorized” to Release Epidemic Information to the Public Before.

Red Song Club, a leftist (pro-communist ideology) website: Has kept an article since February 6, 2020, questioning whether the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory might have leaked the coronavirus to the public. Article link: http://m.szhgh.com/show.php?classid=50&id=222546.

Xilu Website, called itself China’s military portal: For many days, it kept the same article on-line challenging the Wuhan lab for leaking the virus but finally took it out. Old link: http://www.xilu.com/20200207/1000010001120545.html.

The shortage of medical supplies has created tension between local governments as everyone works on control and prevention of the novel coronavirus. Several places have been reported for confiscating other locality’s medical supplies.

• In early February, Dali City, Yunnan Province, confiscated hundreds of boxes of face masks belonging to several cities, including Huangshi City, Hubei Province, Chongqing City, Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, and Cixi City, Zhejiang Province.
• After customs in Shengyang City, Liaoning Province detained 100,000 face masks of Qingdao City, Shandong Province, Qingdao drafted an official notice that “following the reciprocal principle,” their customs will detain the face masks that Shenyang bought from Korea.
• Mengzi City, Yunnan Province detained over 100,000 face masks that Liucheng County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region had purchased.

The most recent case was that the Shanghai Armed Police went to Rizhao City, Shandong Province to escort 5,000 protective suits back to Shanghai. They drove over a thousand kilometer (over 600 miles) in 28 hours and successfully brought the suits back to Shanghai. Continue reading →

Many people, including medical experts, have been questioning the origin of the coronavirus. Many Chinese individually questioned whether it was created by the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, China’s first Biocontainment Level 4 (BL4) lab (Chinese call it a P4 lab) in Wuhan.

There have been widespread discussions among Chinese individuals on the Internet about a few “theories” to support this suspicion, though officially the media have remained silent:

1. The virus was leaked to the public by selling experimental animals with the coronavirus.
2. Huang Yanling (黄燕玲), a female graduate student who studied at the P4 lab in 2012, was the first coronavirus patient (Patient “No. Zero”).
3. No one from the P4 lab has caught the coronavirus, so they may know a specific way to protect themselves.

On February 15, the government declared theory #2 to be a “rumor.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, issued a statement that Huang Yanling didn’t work at Wuhan P4 lab after her graduation.

Beijing News interviewed Shi Zhengli, the lead technician at the P4 lab and Chen Quanjiao, a researcher at the lab. Both were not sure if the lab has someone called Huang Yanling, but Shi Zhengli flatly rejected the idea that patient “No. Zero” was from the lab. “How could that be? It is definitely fake news. I can guarantee that including graduate students, no one in our institute has been infected. Our institute has zero infections.”

Caixin also gave a detailed report on patient “No. Zero.” In addition to mentioning that it was a rumor, it explained the significance of identifying patient “No. Zero” and mentioned that the first reported infection case of coronavirus was on December 1, 2019 and the patient didn’t go to the seafood market, which China blamed as the starting point of the virus.

Related posting on Chinascope:

• Virus Origin: Genome Analysis of the New Wuhan Coronavirus Found Viral Sequences Suspicious of Laboratory Engineering

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After Xi Jinping pushed for thawing the economic freeze due to the lockdown of cities in the face of the novel coronavirus, a few places in China mobilized businesses to resume work. However, several companies, after restarting work, immediately reported a patient of coronavirus at work and thus had to stop operations and instead quarantine all or part of the employees who came to work for another 14 days.

• An office worker from Guangzhou was found to have caught the coronavirus. All employees from his company were stopped from working and put under quarantine.
• A person returned to Beijing to resume his work after the Chinese New Year. After working for eight days, he was found to have the coronavirus. Several dozen people in his department were quarantined and a colleague who sat next to him at the cafeteria during lunch was infected.
• A branch of Chongqing Titanium Industry Company, owned by the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Company, a State-owned enterprise and the largest steel maker in Western China, had 2 confirmed cases and 1 asymptomatic infection case, with 131 people having had close contact with the patients.
• Lianyuan Conch Cement Factory in Loudi City, Hunan Province and an electricity power plant in Shanxi Province also reported cases. The companies either stopped operations or locked down the employees.
• Gree Electric in Zhuhai City, Hubei Province reported that a driver of a shuttle bus to transport its employees to work had close contact with a confirmed coronavirus patient. Gree has several tens of thousands of employees in Zhuhai.

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Leadership: Xi Not Happy with Tough Measures to Contain Coronavirus  When such Measures Harm the Economy

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