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September 22, 2021, Pandemic Report: COVID Is Spreading in China

COVID-19 continues to spread in Fujian Province, with an accumulative 418 confirmed cases from September 10 to September 21. The two major cities impacted are Xiamen and Putian. For the past four days the number of cases in Xiamen has surpassed the number in Putian. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding the details about the actual spread of COVID in China, so the actual number of infections is unknown.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan visited Xiamen and Putian on September 18. Sun usually represents the central government to visit locales about their COVID-19 work only when the local pandemic situation has become extremely severe.

Also, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province reported eight confirmed cases from September 21 to September 22. The CCP Harbin Municipal Committee Secretary Wang Zhaoli said that the current situation in Harbin is severe and complex.

Related postings on Chinascope:

Sources:
1. Radio Free Asia, September 22, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/4-09222021100621.html
2. China’s government site, September 20, 2021
http://www.gov.cn/guowuyuan/2021-09/20/content_5638441.htm
3. Lianhe Zaobao, September 22, 2021
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20210922-1196116

Chinese Version of TikTok Limits Kids under 14 Years Old to 40 Minutes per Day

On September 18, China’s short video application Douyin announced that all real-name users, including new users, under the age of 14 have been put into teenage mode, which only allows usage of 40 minutes a day. The app will also block these users between 10 pm and 6 am every day. The announcement stated that no user can exit the teenage mode by himself.

The announcement called on users under the age of 14 who have not yet registered with their real names to launch the teenage mode by themselves and suggested parents should help their children complete the real name registration for the teenage mode.

China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) issued a notice on August 30 that all online game companies can only provide up to one-hour service to minors from 8 pm to 9 pm every Friday to Sunday and on legal holidays.

Douyin is a short video social media smartphone application developed by ByteDance, a Chinese partially state-owned multinational internet technology company. TikTok is an overseas version that is not available in mainland China.

Source: Beijing News, September 18, 2021
https://www.bjnews.com.cn/detail/163194918814195.html

LTN: Wikipedia Permanently Banned Some Chinese Users

Major Taiwanese news network Liberty Times Network (LTN) recently reported that Wikipedia imposed an unprecedented permanent ban on seven Chinese users for their login rights and another twelve users for their management and editing rights since they were suspected of reporting Hong Kong Wikipedia editors to the Hong Kong National Security Agency. Since the outbreak of the campaign against the revised draft of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in Hong Kong in 2019, Wikipedia editors in Hong Kong and China have had political differences in their description of the situation in Hong Kong. After the HK National Security Law took effect last year, Wikipedia issued a statement that it will not share non-public user information with the Hong Kong government unless there is a clear legal requirement or an immediate life-threatening danger. Wikipedia is now banned in Mainland China.

Source: LTN, September 15, 2021
https://news.ltn.com.tw/amp/news/world/breakingnews/3672959

September 15, 2021, Pandemic Report: COVID Spreading in China

On September 10, Beijing announced that there were two COVID-19 cases in Fujian Province. From then until the end of September 13, that is within 4 days, Fujian Province reported a total of 139 cases. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding the details about the actual spread of COVID in China, so the real number of infections is unknown.

The infection in Fujian Province started in Putian City and quickly spread to Quanzhou City and Xiamen City. Many children have been infected. Among the 85 positive cases in Putian City, 36 are students. The number includes 8 kindergarteners and 28 elementary school students.

Related postings on Chinascope:

Source: China News Service, September 15, 2021
http://www.fj.chinanews.com/news/fj_zxsj/2021/2021-09-15/490072.html

Pandemic – Many Learned of the COVID-19 Virus in China Weeks before the CCP’s Report

The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, reported that Ian Lipkin, one of the world’s top epidemiologists and a professor at Columbia University, said on numerous occasions that he learned about the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China on December 15, 2019. He repeated the date in a documentary film by the director Spike Lee. He also told Columbia University Medical Center that he first heard about the outbreak “in the middle of December 2019” from his friends at the China’s Center for Disease Control.

Beijing hid the outbreak news for quite a while. Dr. Li Wenliang revealed the information in a Wechat discussion group on December 27, after which the police admonished him. That was the first occurrence in which the Chinese talked about the virus.

The report also listed other sources that indicated the outbreak was earlier:

The academic in charge of collating official data told a Chinese health journal of a suspected fatality of a patient who fell ill in late September in 2019, followed by two more cases on November 14 and 21.

Connor Reed, a 25-year-old Briton teaching in Wuhan, said he fell ill on November 25.  Two months later, a hospital confirmed that his debilitating sickness was  the new coronavirus.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law in Washington, said he learned of the disease in mid-December, telling the Los Angeles Times he heard “from a friend in Wuhan that there is a novel coronavirus and it looks very serious.”

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier told a documentary that he discussed the outbreak in the first week of December with his colleague Marion Koopmans, a member of the WHO inquiry team.

Source: Daily Mail, September 4, 2021
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958207/Scientist-reveals-heard-Covid-Wuhan-TWO-WEEKS-Beijing-warned-world.html

Pandemic Diplomacy: South Africa Rejected China’s Vaccine

The COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program under the World Health Organization (WHO) plans to distribute 100 million doses of Chinese COVID vaccines to countries in Africa and Asia. These vaccines are made by China’s two vaccine producers Sinovac Biotech and Sinopharm.

South Africa was given 2.5 million dozes of the Sinovac vaccine (CoronaVac). Its officials rejected these vaccines. Nicholas Crisp, Deputy Director-General in South Africa’s National Department of Health, overseeing its COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, said, “There is not enough information on the effectiveness of these vaccines against the Delta variant, nor is there information on the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine in HIV-infected populations. We did not accept the Sinovac vaccine from COVAX because it was not mature enough in our evaluation and planning process.”

Algeria, which was given 8 million dozes of Sinopharm’s vaccine, is also cautious and said that vaccine is a “possible” choice.

Related postings on Chinascope:

Source: Taiwan Apple Daily, August 29, 2021
https://tw.appledaily.com/international/20210829/IXSELKR7KZF65MH4FBGCGK5SOA/

Falun Gong Scored a Win in HK Court

Falun Gong online site Minghui recently reported that Falun Gong practitioner Hong Ruifeng won a case in Hong Kong. In 2013, the Hong Kong government accused Hong of an “Illegal display of placards and posters on government land without written permission” and “Obstructing public officials.” On August 19, 2021, the court ruled that Hong Ruifeng was “not guilty” of either of these two counts.

Since 2013, Hong has been clarifying the truth about Falun Gong on the street in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) confiscated his banner board. The government later filed a lawsuit against him. Hong explained that there was video evidence showing that it was actually FEHD staff who prevented him from closing the small site. Hong said he was happy to win the case. He has been on the street clarifying the truth about Falun Gong for 21 years. He also insisted that, “The persecution (of Falun Gong) has not stopped, and the truth has to be clarified.” Hong expressed the belief that winning the case means that justice returned to Falun Gong practitioners. [Editor’s note: On July 20, 1999, The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong. Since then, Falun Gong practitioners Have been clarifying the truth about Falun Gong to enable people to undestand why the CCP’s decision was wrong.]

Source: Minghui, August 22, 2021
https://bit.ly/38xVO4t

Young “Post-90” Chinese Aren’t Getting Married

According to official Chinese statistics, most young people born in the 1990s do not want to get married and the divorce rate among married people is nearly 35 percent. More and more families are single-person households.

The data that the China Ministry of Civil Affairs recently released shows that there are currently about 170 million people, born in the 1990s (the post-90s generation) in China, who have a male to female ratio of 54 to 46. This group has reached the age of marriage. The oldest post-90s are in their 30s, and the youngest post-90s are 22 years old. While between 70 and 80 million “post-90s” people were expected to register for marriage, fewer than 10 million “post-90s” couples have actually registered for marriage, which translates into a marriage rate of a little over 10 percent. Further, among the post-90s who are already married, the divorce rate is as high as 35 percent.

Chinese social media comments attribute the low marriage rate among post-90s people to high housing costs and low income. Most of the post-90s are the only child in the family. Once married, a young couple would need to support four elder parents and one young child. The cost can be prohibitive for many of those in the post-90s.

According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, of all age groups, in 2019, marriage registrations in China fell by 8.5 percent year on year, while divorces rose by 5.4 percent in the same period. The data shows that the same trend has continued since 2015.

According to survey data released by the China National Bureau of Statistics in the China Statistical Yearbook, the result has been more families which are single-person households. One-person households have increased consecutively every year, from 13.15 percent in 2015 to 18.45 percent in 2019, .

Sources:

NetEase, August 18, 2021
https://www.163.com/dy/article/GHNH1D4D0534B9EY.html

Xinhua, July 14, 2021
http://www.xinhuanet.com/video/sjxw/2021-07/14/c_1211240405.htm