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Hospital’s Death Certificate Needs State Council’s Approval If the Cause Is COVID

Since December, China has suffered a massive number of COVID infections and a large number of deaths. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hides the infection count and especially the death tolls. Epoch Times obtained an official document from the Guangxi Autonomous Region Epidemic Prevention and Control Command Center (document number SJSX223577) issued on December 25, 2022. The document stated that any death caused by COVID must be approved by the central government.

The document said that the State Council’s Joint Prevention and Joint Control System required that, for any death of a COVID patient or patient who had both other diseases and COVID, the death report must first be discussed at the hospital or the medical institute within 24 hours. Then it needs to pass the city’s (COVID) expert group’s review and get its approval. Then it needs to be submitted to the Autonomous Region’s Health Committee’s designated email account, and then following the procedure it is to be reported to the State Council’s Join Prevention and Join Control System’s Medical Treatment Team. Once the State Council’s team approves the cause, the corresponding medical institute can submit it as a COVID case to the Epidemic Direct Report Network. Death cases without the “state’s approval” cannot be submitted to the Epidemic Direct Report Network as a COVID case.

The document also stressed keeping the process confidential and not to disclose the city’s (COVID) expert group’s opinion. Cases with severe COVID infections or deaths, “due to the information’s sensitive nature, must be handled by designated personnel, and must be submitted to the designated email account. WeChat or QQ (social media tools that are more likely to be leaked to the public) are strictly prohibited.”

Source: Epoch Times, February 1, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/2/1/n13919948.htm

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics Social Stability

Chinese Officials Obstructed Western Reporters from Conducting Interviews about Covid in China

Selina Wang, a CNN reporter stationed in China, was interfered with and even blocked from interviewing Chinese people regarding COVID. Her reporting team went to Guizhou Province to do an interview. When they arrived at Rongjiang County where the Dong ethnic group people live, six local officials “welcomed” them and started following them. Four stayed in the same or nearby hotels. Every morning they were in the hotel lobby waiting for Selina’s team and then followed them. Those followers brought an official with them who would speak in the Dong dialects to the villagers before Selina interviewed them. They refused to tell Selina what they told the villagers.

Realizing they could not have a meaningful interview, Selina’s team drove to a town two hours away. When they went to a hospital and started interviewing people, a man showed up. He claimed he was from the Propaganda Department and asked what Selina was doing there. Selina and her team then drove to a village clinic 30 minutes away. That man and another woman followed them and told the people there not to say anything to Selina.

Selina’s team then went to another place and found a woman who was willing to talk to them about the Chinese New Year. After a few questions, a government staff member arrived in the middle of the interview and took the interviewee away. Selina went to a few hospitals afterwards. However. the government staff members always followed them. For that reason, no one was willing to be interviewed.

An Internet posting also revealed that the Tianshui City Maji District Communist Party Propaganda Department, Gansu Province, issued an “Urgent Notice” to all of its towns, street residential committees, and the District Health Bureau. The notice stated, “ The Provincial Propaganda Department called to inform us that on January 17, three foreign media reporters (2 men and 1 woman), without permission, conducted interview activities in hospitals, health centers, community health service stations, and villages in Lanzhou City and Dingxi City (both are in Gansu Province). They are likely to sneak into Tianshui City to continue their activities tomorrow and the next day (January 18 and 19).”

The notice asked towns, street residential committees, and District Health Bureaus to attach great importance and pay close attention (to this activity). If they found those three people’s whereabouts, they were advised report to the District Party Committee Propaganda Department contact person Dong Binbo immediately. They were told that no one from the medical units, villages, and communities is allowed to accept their interviews or answer their inquiries about the epidemic.

Source:
1. Epoch Times, January 23, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/1/27/n13916922.htm
2. Radio Free Asia, January 19, 2023
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/gt-01192023010127.html.

Briefings | | |   @CS Social Stability

Pandemic: One Doctor Serves Nine Villages

China Newsweek reported, “A doctor who graduated from a secondary vocational school is responsible for the medical care for nine villages and a total of 1,400 people. When the COVID epidemic wave hit there, he had only a few boxes of fever reduction medicine and 30 antigen test kits.” In the past three years, his villages didn’t treat any patient who had a fever or store any medicine, nor would COVID medicine be shipped there since they were in remote mountains. This doctor spent 3,000 yuan (US$440), of his own money to buy an oxygen machine for his patients.

Normally China’s village hospitals do not have enough medical staff members, medical beds, ventilators, or extra-corporeal life support devices. However, many elderly people in villages do not have regular medical checkups and they often had some different illnesses already before COVID hit. Thus such villages face a much tougher fight against the COVID infection wave.

Even the county level hospitals are short of ventilators: only half of the beds have them.

Source: China News Agency, January 16, 2023
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202301160242.aspx

Hot Topics | | |   Economy/Resources Social Stability

Henan Province Announced It Has Passed The COVID Pandemic Peak

The Henan Provincial government announced on January 9 that the province has passed the peak of the COVID infection. At a news conference, the government stated that, by January 6, 89 percent of people in the province had been infected with the COVID virus; and that, according to the data of patients seeking fever treatment, the peak of the infection was reached on December 19, 2022. Since then, the count of the infected  has continuously been decreasing.

The Chinese Communist Party has been hiding the COVID infection count in China. Using the province’s population in 2021 – 98.83 million people – it means 88 million people in Henan, one province alone, had been infected with COVID.

Source: Zhengzhou Daily, January 9, 2023
https://www.zzrbnews.com/kangyi/202210/content-e9c1f68b86ac869b.html

Briefings | | |   Social Stability

Chinese Created a New Term: “Human Mine”

The Chinese have recently created a term to describe themselves: the term is: “human mine” (人矿). Some people created a term “huminerals.” It means that an individual human is treated as a mine; whereas the authorities (the communist regime) take the valuable resources from the mine and then dispose of it when its  resources are used up and it becomes useless.

An article discussed ten points that this term reveals to people. The following are some excerpts from the article:

1. You are a resource, not a subject; you are means, not an end goal. (You are) exhausting your whole life’s energy in order to benefit someone else, not for your own life goals.

2. The life of a human mine has three stages: Mining, Use, and Waste Treatment. The first dozen years of education were an investment in you to turn you into a usable mine. In the middle few decades, you are consumed. Eventually, when you are no longer usable, you will be disposed of in a way that is as non-polluting as possible.

5. The value of a human mine is similar to coal, oil, or other natural resources. It is cheap when there is an ample supply and expensive when there are few.

7. A related concept to “human mine” is the “mine owner.” The mine owner mines the human mine and gives that person (the human mine) a chance to “dedicate himself” to (the owner). [Note: the Chinese Communist Party has a propaganda slogan to ask people to “dedicate themselves” to the over-all society.]

10. The awakened human mine feels the pain if he cannot change anything. To reduce this pain, he has to muddle through and pretend he is asleep. So, when you see a group of silent man-mines, you don’t know how many are actually awake until a particular moment (when people finally speak or act out).

Source: China Digital Times, January 2, 2023
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/691612.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics Social Stability

Dalian University of Technology Posted 25 Obituaries in One Day; Quickly Deleted after Netizens Discovered Them

Taiwan news media Newtalk reported that China’s 2023 seems to be the “year of obituaries.” Dalian University of Technology in Liaoning Province issued 25 obituaries on January 3. All of the deceased were teachers and professors who died around New Year’s Day. After attracting attention from the outside world, the obituaries were immediately removed from the website, leaving the latest news as the ones posted before December 31 of last year.

According to the information available on the website, 33 party members and professors died in December, far more than in the past. This may be related to the authorities’ relaxation of the epidemic prevention policy.

Last month, some Chinese media found that Beijing University and Tsinghua University had a lot of recent obituaries. From the end of October to mid-December, 21 professors from Peking University passed away. 18 professors over 65 from Tsinghua University died between mid-November and early December.

Source: New Talk, January 5, 2023
https://newtalk.tw/news/view/2023-01-05/851770

Briefings | | |   Social Stability

Chinese Are Protesting for Unpaid Wages

Thousands of workers at Zybio, a pharmaceutical company in Chongqing City, held a protest inside the factory and even clashed with the special police force which came to suppress them.

Zybio designs and manufactures medical diagnostic reagents and instruments. According to an interview with a Zybio employee, the company hired around seven thousand temporary workers in early December, promising to pay them 1,000 yuan (US$146) as a bonus on top of their hourly pay if they would work until January 21 and another 2,000 yuan bonus if they worked until February 15.

On January 6, the company announced it would lay off 8,000 people. Most of them were those temporary workers. The company said they lost orders. It used to produce COVID nucleic acid extraction testing kits, which were in high demand when Beijing carried out the “zero-COVID” policy. It switched to producing antigen testing kits after the government stopped that policy. However, workers suspected that Zybio had enough orders but used a lack of orders as an excuse to avoid paying a bonus to the workers.

A smaller group of people started protesting on the evening of January 6. Since the company executives hid themselves and only let the factory manager arrange the layoff, people got furious and started smashing things. Several thousand workers gathered at the company on the next day. A few more company executives were found and beaten.

Special police came to the factory. Some videos posted online showed the clashes between the workers and the police, including a video showing that a small group of policemen retreated while the workers were chasing and throwing things at them.

The protesters shouted one appeal: “We just want our salaries.”

Zybio proposed a resolution: It would pay every worker their December salary on January 7 and their January salary on January 8. In addition, it would pay 1,000 yuan to those who left as their severance pay, or to those who stayed as a bonus.

Since people got the money they demanded, they accepted the proposal. The protesters all left the company immediately.

Demanding unpaid wages has been a big issue when the Chinese New Year has approached. The government has demonstrated the habit of delaying payments to its contractors and companies. It has also had the habit of delaying payment to, or not paying in the end, its subcontractors or workers. Since migrant workers usually go home for Chinese New Year, they started a protest to demand their money before the Near Year.

This year has been even harder as some companies have struggled to survive due to the bad economy in China.

A netizen posted 40 videos about people at different places, including Beijing, Guangdong,  Shandong, Hebei, and other locations, demanding the payment of their wages on either January 4 or January 5.

The authorities somehow belittled the workers who tried to defend their own rights, as their actions interrupted society’s stability. Sometimes the government uses force to drive the workers away. Some officials came up with a term “malicious wage collection” to defame those workers who were actually victims.

Recently an online posting showed a banner hanging at a company, saying, “Fiercely crack down on malicious wage collection actions; defend the company’s illegal action of not paying wages.”

It is yet to be seen how the salary demand protest will continue its development in China.

Sources:
1. Epoch Times, January 7, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/1/7/n13901673.htm
2. Radio Free Asia, January 5, 2023
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/kw-01052023132119.html

Briefings | | |   @CS Social Stability

CNA: First Day of Spring Festival Travel Recorded 30 Million Travelers

Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that China’s Covid prevention policies have been downgraded. Many people are having their first return home reunion in three years. On the 7th, the first day of the Spring Festival travel rush, a total of 34.736 million passengers were transported by railways, roads and airways in China. This represents an increase of 38.9 percent over the same period in 2022. China’s Spring Festival travel is known to be the largest population movement on the surface of the Earth. The 2023 Spring Festival travel period is from January 7th to February 15th, a total of 40 days. Xu Chengguang, the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Transportation, said that the total passenger flow during the Spring Festival travel period this year is estimated to be about 2.095 billion, an increase of 99.5 percent over the same period last year, and returned to 70.3 percent of the same period in 2019. Among them, visiting relatives accounted for about 55 percent of the passenger flow, work accounted for about 24 percent, plus tourism and business travel accounted for about 10 percent respectively. However, this year’s Spring Festival travel peak is superimposed with the Covid peak, which made this Spring Festival travel the most uncertain and the most complicated one. The situation introduces the greatest difficulties and challenges in recent years. At this moment, it is hard to find train tickets, and many popular routes have been sold out. In addition, there is also an increase in demand for flights. According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, during the Spring Festival travel season, an average of 11,000 passenger flights will be arranged daily.

Source: CNA, January 8, 2023
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202301080129.aspx

Briefings | | |   Social Stability