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Fan Yifei, Deputy Chairman of the People’s Bank, China’s Central Bank, announced on February 15, that commercial banks, after receiving money bills from customers, must disinfect the bills before re-circulating them and giving them back to customers. In regions that have severe novel coronavirus infections, bills must go through ultraviolet ray or high temperature treatment. Then they must be stored for 14 days before re-circulating them back to market. In regions with light infections, bills need to be disinfected and then stored for a week.

Guangzhou has gone one step further. It destroys bills received from hospitals, farmer’s markets, and the public transit system. Continue reading →

At midnight on February 13, 2020, Zhangwan District in Shiyan City, Hubei Province implemented the first “Wartime Control Order” (战时管制令) . Dawu County of Xiaogan City, Hubei Province also implemented a “Wartime Control Order” later on the same day.

The order by the Zhangwan District, Shiyan City required that every building in the district must be locked down. Any resident or other person, if not medical staff, epidemic control staff, public utility staff, telecom staff, or food supplier staff, is prohibited from entering or leaving the building. All residential communities must strictly follow “wartime control.” The government organs, including the township, street, or neighborhood community (a government controlled organization to manage a community) will provide food of certain fixed kinds at a fixed time. They will also buy urgently needed medicine for the people who are locked in.

Anyone who breaks the rule will be detained for at least 14 days. Continue reading →

On February 13, 2020, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Party Committee issued a “Wartime Status Order” (战时状态令). Any mid-level party cadres and Party Branch managers whose actions have a big impact and a bad influence will be put on suspension or removed from the job immediately.

The order asked all Party members and cadres to understand fully the urgency and importance of the current “emergency,” “critical moment,” and “crisis point,” establish an “unusual mentality” and enter into a “wartime status.”

Everyone should unconditionally obey the “wartime status” Party Committee’s decision and serve the current epidemic control work.

Everyone should also strengthen their political security, ideology security, Internet information security, secret information security, laboratory animal security, and food security. Resolutely prevent any information leaks or any confidential security incident. Continue reading →

The website of Dongying City, Shandong Province, reported a story on January 28, 2020, on how dedicated the Internet police officers were to their work.

Guo Qiqi, an Internet police officer told the news reporter, “Since January 22, (the Dongying government) has been using the emergency response plan. Four female Internet police officers have been stationed to work around the clock for 7 days. When they got really tired, they would go take a nap. They kept their mobile phones with them at all times.”

“One WeChat message can impact a few hundred people in that group. If it is reposted to other groups, it can reach thousands or tens of thousands of people very quickly.” Guo said that the public opinion control plan requires them to resolve (remove) “untruthful” information from identifying it, to verifying it, to declaring it is a rumor, all in 30 minutes.

The four Internet police officers’ achievement was that, “They monitored over 3,000 public opinion messages, filtered and deleted nearly 100 poisonous messages, declared and clarified 10 rumors, and provided positive guidance to the senders of 38 messages.”

Guo said, “Rumors will mislead the public. Please go to the official media to get information.” In addition, she expressed that the Internet is also governed under the law and, according to the law, the “police will go after, ” anyone who creates rumors or spreads rumors on the Internet.

Many people were shocked after reading the article, as it gave a live example of the Communist regime’s Internet censorship.

Related posting on Chinascope:

• Stability Control: High-Tech Companies Seeking Funds for Stability Control During Epidemic

Continue reading →

Since the government filters out a lot of information, many people in China try to post information on the Internet on their own. Fang Bin was an example.

Fang’s most famous posting was the YouTube video that he posted on February 1, 2020, when he drove to several hospitals to observe the situation there. In the video, he saw a car from the Wucang Funeral House parked outside of the Wuhan No 5 Hospital. When he arrived (at 28:00 minutes), there were three corpses inside the car. After he went inside the ER room and came out, by then (at 32:00 minutes) he saw the car had eight corpses. A person (possibly someone from the funeral house) also showed anger toward the authorities: “They only report a dozen deaths a day!”

After that, the police stayed outside of his apartment building to monitor him. Fang had reported every day on the Internet that he had not been arrested yet and thanked the public for their attention that was keeping him safe. On February 9, sources confirmed that police broke into his apartment and took him away.

Source:
1. YouTube

2. Liberty Times, February 11, 2020
https://news.ltn.com.tw/news/world/breakingnews/3065116

Amidst the novel coronavirus epidemic, about 300 Chinese companies are seeking a total of at least 57.4 Billion Yuan (US $8.2 Billion) in loans. Either the epidemic has hit them badly or they will participate in the control of the epidemic.

Among them, one is the facial recognition company, Megvii Technologies. It applied for 100 million Yuan (US $14 million) to enhance the facial recognition accuracy of people wearing masks.

Qihoo 360 also seeks 1 billion Yuan (US $140 million). It said that it will use the money to buy medical related products and develop an application to follow and prevent the coronavirus. Qihoo 360 is an Internet security company known for its antivirus software, web browser, and mobile application store. Continue reading →

Epoch Times, an independent Chinese media, reported that the Wuhan Novel Coronavirus Prevention and Control Command Center issued an emergency notice, requesting the local command center and relevant business units to prepare 100,000 patient beds by February 20.

According to the scanned images that Epoch Times posted, the order stated:

Phase 1: Prepare 50,000 beds by February 10, including 12,500 beds for critically ill patients, 18,000 for mild patients, and 21,020 for those quarantined.

Phase 2: Prepare 80,000 beds by February 15, including 13,000 beds for critically ill patients, 23,100 for mild patients, and 44,000 for those quarantined.

Phase 3: Prepare 100,000 beds by February 20, including 14,000 beds for critically ill patients, 30,000 for mild patients, and 56,000 for those quarantined.

People have been questioning the accuracy of the infection count that Beijing reported. On February 12, Tencent reported the official statistics as 44,730 infection cases nationwide with 33,366 in Hubei Province. On February 13, Tencent statistics jumped to 59,901 infection cases nationwide, a 34 percent increase from the previous day. Infection cases in Hubei province jumped to 48,206, or a 44 percent increase. A Beijing expert explained that this was due to adjusting the coronavirus infection verification method.

However, even with the adjusted higher number, there is still a gap between the 100,000 beds and the officially reported confirmed cases in Wuhan (there is no specific number for Wuhan but one can assume it is part of the Hubei count).

Continue reading →