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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has loosened the lockdown in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Novel Coronavirus. Starting on March 23, the city distributed cinerary urns of the deaths. Earlier, the city was locked down and thus relatives could not go to the funeral homes to pick up the urns that held their loved ones’ ashes.

This gave people a way to estimate the coronavirus death count in Wuhan, which people believe the CCP has been hiding from the public. The government announced 2,531 deaths in Wuhan.

Radio Free Asia reported that the funeral homes said that they would distribute 500 caskets or urns per day and try to complete the distribution before the Qing Ming Festival (a Chinese festival to sweep the tombs and worship the departed). There will be 12 days from March 23 to the Qing Ming Festival (April 4, 2020). Since there are 7 funeral homes, the total caskets distributed will be 500 x 12 x 7, or  42,000.

Another estimate was based on the number of incinerators. Wuhan has 84 incinerators. Assuming 65 functioned normally, each one ran around the clock, and each body took an hour to burn, that would be 65 x 24 = 1,560 bodies per day. Taking out 200 regular deaths each day would leave 1,360 coronavirus deaths per day. In 30 days, the death count will be 40,800.

A person who requested anonymity told Radio Free Asia that Wuhan funeral homes processed about 28,000 corpses during the peak month of the epidemic. “Each funeral home could only report their numbers to the city, but were not allowed to share with other funeral homes.”

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Death Count: Placing Patient in Corpse Bag While Alive
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• Death Count: Wuhan Has Unusually High Level of Sulfur Dioxide Gas
• Death Count: Funeral Home Interviews Suggested 500 Corpses Incinerated in Wuhan per Day
  
• Death Count: Wuhan Incinerated 122 Corpses Per Day Before Coronavirus Outbreak

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China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that, starting at midnight on March 28, it would suspend entry into China of foreigners with a valid visa to visit China or those holding a residence card; suspend entry into China of foreigners with APEC business travel cards; suspend granting visas at ports of entry, including the 24/72/144-hour transit visa exemption, the Hainan entry visa exemption, the Shanghai cruise visa exemption, the 144-hour visa exemption for foreigners from Hong Kong and Macao to enter Guangdong, and the Guangxi exemption for ASEAN tourist groups. Entry with a diplomatic, official, courtesy, or C visa would not be affected. Foreigners who come to China to engage in necessary economic, trade, scientific and technological activities, and for urgent humanitarian needs, can apply for visas from Chinese embassies and consulates abroad. Entry of foreigners who receive visas after this announcement is not affected.

Earlier, on March 22, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) issued an order that any flight with Beijing as the final destination needed to go through one of 12 cities for port of entry process. These 12 cities included Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, Hohhot, Shanghai Pudong, Jinan, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shenyang, Dalian, Zhengzhou, and Xi’an. Travelers who passed the coronavirus prevention test could continue to fly to Beijing.

Hong Kong International Airport reported that, per Beijing’s request, the airport will not provide land or water transportation to mainland China.

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On March 25. China decided to remove the travel ban between cities (except Wuhan) in Hubei province. Wuhan’s transportation control and people’s restrictions from going out will also be lifted on April 8.

However, there were concerns that this may led to the spread of the coronavirus.

Radio France International reported that Wuhan reported that, a few hours before announcing the loosening up Hubei Province, a doctor had been confirmed to have the Coronavirus infection. Beijing had reported zero infections for four days from March 19 to 22.

Beijing City requested that all people who went to Hubei on either a business or a personal trip not return to Beijing. Some Hubei citizens felt that they were treated as third-class citizens, where Beijing people were the first class and other citizens second class. Ying Yong, the Hubei Provincial Party Secretary “appealed to all societies throughout the nation to treat Hubei people kindly.”

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Infection Count: 60 Percent Hidden Infection Cases in Wuhan Are Not Reported
• Infection Count: Cured Patients Tested COVID-19 Positive Again
• Infection Count: Zhang Wenhong Worried about Shanghai’s Confirmed Infection Count Being Zero
• Infection Count: Shandong Internal Report Had Much Higher Infection Counts Than the Published Numbers
• Infection Count: Caixin Showed Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau Was Lying

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To portray itself as the world leader in fighting the novel coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has painted a rosy picture that China has won the battle with the coronavirus while other countries are in deep trouble. However, this propaganda campaign backfired. Many Chinese overseas have been lured to return to China and the CCP quarantined them in the fear of infection. The CCP then started to tell the overseas Chinese not to come back.

The CCP also took on the “content farms” that spread rumors that other countries were in trouble. These farms were following the CCP’s propaganda strategy, but their “excellent achievements” contributed to the backfire.

The Paper, a newspaper in Beijing, compared some of the articles from these content farms and found they were amazingly similar in both the title and the contents throughout the article.

It gave the comparison result of two articles, one about Chinese in Ethiopia and one about Chinese in Hungry. The two articles had almost exactly the same contents, with the only exception being the swapping out of the country name, capital city, and a pseudo person (Mr. Xu vs. Ms. Liu).

It pointed out that that these articles were pushed onto many Chinese Communist websites in different countries. Three companies, all under a person named Guo Hong in Fujian Province owned those websites.

Radio Free Asia reported that Fujian police investigated Guo Hong’s husband Xue Yumin, the actual man who ran the operations in those companies, along with other fake media owners who supported the CCP’s propaganda campaign, under the charge of “fabricating fake information that led many Chinese overseas to return to China and jeopardize China’s epidemic control.”

A senior media practitioner Mr. Liu pointed out that the CCP has a long history of brainwashing overseas Chinese. Though they stay outside of China, they still rely on China’s state machine and Chinese media to obtain information. And thus, content farms have found it easy to cheat them at this time.

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Propaganda and Lies: Mainland Chinese Calling the Returning Chinese “Flying Thousands of Miles to Poison Chinese”
• Propaganda and Lies: Overseas Chinese Fell for the Propaganda That China’s Epidemic Was Over
• Propaganda and Lies: The Truth about the Video “An American Spread Virus in Wuhan Subway”
• Propaganda and Lies: Italian Media Called out CCP for Spreading Fake News
• Propaganda and Lies: Chinese Bots Flooded Twitter to Spread That U.S. Is the Origin of the Coronavirus

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To speed up the coronavirus testing, Spain ordered 5.5 million testing kits from China. However, Spanish media reported that the Health Bureau in Spain had confirmed that China’s testing kits had a quality problem.

In theory, these testing kits were supposed to have at least an 80 percent accuracy rate. But the actual results in Spain showed only 30 percent of the results were accurate. A microbiology expert who participated in the testing of the kits said, “Using these quick testing kits has no meaning.”

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• “World Leader”: Experts: China’s Epidemic Control Model Cannot Be Adopted by Other Countries
• World Leader: Taiwan Set an Example for the World

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According to Radio Free Asia, China News Week Magazine reported an article published on Nature on March 20, saying that hidden infections may account for 60 percent of the total novel coronavirus infections. This conclusion was based on an article submitted to medRxiv by the research team led by Wu Tangchun, School of Public Health, Huazhong Science and Technology University.

The article by Wu’s team analyzed the data from Wuhan Health Commissions and built a math model. Based on their model, at least 59 percent of infection cases in Wuhan have not been reported or recorded, including asymptomatic cases and mild cases.

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Infection Count: Cured Patients Tested COVID-19 Positive Again
• Infection Count: Zhang Wenhong Worried about Shanghai’s Confirmed Infection Count Being Zero
• Infection Count: Shandong Internal Report Had Much Higher Infection Counts Than the Published Numbers
• Infection Count: Caixin Showed Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau Was Lying
• Infection Count: Changjiang Daily Reported a Coronavirus Case on a Day That the Government Reported Zero

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Xinhua reported that the Czech Republic bought 150,000 novel coronavirus testing kits and, on March 18, used its military plane to ship them back. “Czech Republic Minister of Health Adam Vojtěch said these kits would be sent to the locked down areas where the pandemic is severe. It can give results in 20 minutes.” Xinhua said that Czech’s traditional testing equipment needed 6 hours to give a result.

“The Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said that they received considerable help from China’s Embassy to the Czech Republic in sending a military plane to China to bring the emergency medical supplies back.”

However, on March 23, the Czech news media iROZHLAS reported that 80 percent of China’s quick testing kits produced the wrong result in their testing.

Experts reported on this high error rate at a pandemic information meeting that a regional hygienist Pavla Svrcinova hosted. Svrcinova said that these test kits produced “fake positives” and “fake negatives” when they were compared with the traditional testing results. “It is fortunate that we took this forward-thinking action (to validate the testing kits).”

Related postings on Chinascope:

• “World Leader”: Global Times Called Sweden “Irresponsible” for “Surrendering to Coronavirus”
• “World Leader”: China’s Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Is Ready for Human Testing
• “World Leader”: Experts: China’s Epidemic Control Model Cannot Be Adopted by Other Countries
• World Leader: Taiwan Set an Example for the World
• “World Leader”: Beijing Released a Documentary “The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan”

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To portray itself as the world leader in fighting the novel coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been reporting an extremely low rate of infection cases or even a zero count in many provinces for many days.

However, this propaganda campaign has backfired. The propaganda lured many Chinese who were overseas, especially Chinese students who studied in other countries, to returned to China because it is a “safe haven” as the other parts of the world are reporting high rates of infection.

The CCP did not anticipate this and did not want them, since it was still fighting the coronavirus and had no energy to deal with returning Chinese. The CCP also worried about the potential for importing infections.

China’s official report showed 21 new infection cases on March 17, with 20 coming from overseas.

Beijing reactivated the Xiaotangshan Hospital, a hospital set up during the SARS outbreak in 2003 for the primary purpose of isolating the confirmed patients instead of treating them. Their actual death count was unknown but was guessed to be high. This time, the hospital, with over 1,000 beds, will primarily hold the people found to be at risk after a Custom’s check. It will include confirmed patients and suspected patients.

Postings criticizing the returning Chinese spread on China’s Internet, such as, “You were not here when we were developing the motherland, but you are the fastest to fly back thousands of miles to poison the Chinese here” or, “The motherland treated you as a child but you treated the motherland as a fool.”

A Weibo comment said, “Those overseas Chinese should know that you are coming back to take refuge, not to be our masters. The Chinese people are all suffering a hard time now. Go back if you can’t stand it.”

Another Weibo article made a call to move all people entering China to Wuhan. “Instead of returning to home to create the risk of getting your own family quarantined, why not go to Wuhan to pass the hard times with the people there?”

Many overseas Chinese felt hurt. “When the epidemic exploded in China,” a person said, “many people and I donated money and bought face masks and protective clothing to send to China. Now many of us are sad: we are discriminated against in foreign countries, but also cursed when we go back to China.”

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Propaganda and Lies: Overseas Chinese Fell for the Propaganda That China’s Epidemic Was Over
• Propaganda and Lies: The Truth about the Video “An American Spread Virus in Wuhan Subway”
• Propaganda and Lies: Italian Media Called out CCP for Spreading Fake News
• Propaganda and Lies: Chinese Bots Flooded Twitter to Spread That U.S. Is the Origin of the Coronavirus
• Propaganda and Lies: People’s Daily Commentary: “Must Resist the Poison of Stigmatization”

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