On February 10, 2020, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Central Military Commission issued new, much stricter regulations on the relationship between the PLA command and the local civil government.

Three departments of the Central Military Commission, including the Political Work Department, the Logistics Support Department, and the Discipline Inspection Commission, jointly issued the “Notice on Strict Regulations on Military-Civil Government Interactions” (“Notice”). The “Notice” listed thirteen “strictly forbidden” items, including:

• It is strictly forbidden for PLA units to accept visits and donations from local civil units, enterprises, and individuals, in the form of money, marketable securities, and other payment vouchers;
• It is strictly forbidden for PLA units to accept visits and donations from local civil units and individuals that may affect the execution of PLA official duties;
• It is strictly forbidden for PLA units to request visits from local civil governments and set standards for their visits or ask them for money or supplies in the name of military-civilian joint construction, job needs, and serving the military officers and soldiers.
• It is strictly forbidden for PLA units to accept cars that the local civil unit or individuals donate;
• …

There have been commentaries that the PLA did this to prevent the military units and local governments from forming alliances. There have been reports that some local governments defied Beijing’s direction on the fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic. Continue reading →

A high-profile Chinese researcher was sentenced for corruption and pocketing the gains from selling animals and animal products after lab experiments. This could indirectly strengthen the theory that the novel coronavirus could be leaked from China’s bio lab.

Li Ning, a member of China’s Academy of Engineering and Professor at China’s Agricultural University, and Director of a State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Biotechnology at China Agricultural University, was sentenced on January 3, 2020.

The court verdict stated that, “From July 2008 to February 2012, the defendant Zhang Lei asked defendant Li Ning how to handle the proceeds from the sale of the pigs, cattle, and milk that were no longer needed after the experiments. Li directed those who asked to keep the money for themselves. The sales of the experimental pigs, cattle, and milk totaled 10,179,201.86 yuan (US $ 1.46 million).”

Three witnesses testified that Li had sold the experimental animals and milk. Continue reading →

People are concerned about the accuracy of  the Chinese government’s postings about the death count from the Coronavirus. An unconfirmed self-posting suggested that there could be 400 deaths at the Huoshenshan Hospital every day. The hospital, along with the Leishenshan Hospital, were two high-profile hospitals that Beijing built in Wuhan in 10 days to host the novel coronavirus patients. The  People’s Liberation Army manages the hospitals.

The person (who made the posting) said that he is a doctor at the Huoshenshan Hospital. He made two postings at the 4chan.org website, an anonymous English-language imageboard website. There were grammar errors in his English but Chinascope left his original posting as is. He mentioned that the deaths were not counted as pneumonia death but rather as sudden deaths, and that also the hospital emptied 200 rooms every day (there were two beds per room).

On February 7, 2020, he posted:

“I am a lab technician at Huoshenshan hospital in Wuhan.

The situation is so much worse than you know. Reported death of coronavirus are just those of sudden type, not pneumonic. Daily removes pneumonic patients to not return, whole sections of hospital 200 rooms each and not recorded. They are filled immediately with new pneumonic.

Please know we are trying but there is simply too much.”

After people questioned the validity of the information, the author posted a note on February 8 with “4chan 2020-2-8” in his hand to prove it was true. His posting said: “Is this? I only know little of site, hard to access often.”

[Editor’s Note: The freeing up of rooms is likely due to death. Leishenshan Hospital might have similar death rate. Death count from these two hospitals is likely not part of the corpses collected by funeral houses, as these hospitals are ran by the PLA, outside the civil process.]

Related postings on Chinascope:

• Death Count: Funeral Home Interviews Suggested 500 Corpses Incinerated in Wuhan per Day
• Death Count: Wuhan Incinerated 122 Corpses Per Day Before Coronavirus Outbreak

Continue reading →

As people are concerned with the accuracy of the death count from the Coronavirus that the Chinese government posts, Epoch Times reporters called funeral homes in Wuhan to inquire about the count of incineration each day. The following are the highlights of the report:

1. The interviewee said that both corpse transportation and incineration at his funeral home were four to five times the usual workload.

2. His funeral home has 9 cars to transport corpses. On February 3 alone, his funeral home took in 127 corpses and incinerated 116.

3. Among the 127 corpses, 8 were confirmed coronavirus deaths and 48 were suspected cases. However, since 116 corpses were incinerated immediately, they were likely to be coronavirus deaths, also. in the cases where the death is normal, the family members of the deceased may need more time to coordinate the incineration time.

4. 38 percent of the corpses were from hospitals and 61 percent were directly from people’s homes. This would indicate a large number of patients and deaths occurred outside of the hospital system.

5. Hankou funeral home incinerated more than the funeral home mentioned above. Since Hankou funeral home had 16 cars, it could incinerate 225 corpses, if operating at the same capacity.

6. Another funeral home said that they incinerated 30 corpses in one day. Assuming four other funeral houses incinerated at the same rate, that would be a total of 150 per day.

[Editor’s Note: The funeral’s death count combines natural deaths and coronavirus deaths. There can be two methods to estimate the coronavirus death count.

Method 1: Assuming 116 out of 127 deaths were coronavirus deaths, that’s about 90 percent of the total deaths. The total death count from above was 127 + 225 + 150 = 502; 90 percent of that would have been coronavirus deaths, which was 451.

Method 2: The total death count was 502. The normal incineration rate was 122 per day before the epidemic outbreak (see Chinascope posting “Death Count: Wuhan Incinerated 122 Corpses before Coronavirus Outbreak”). That leaves 380 coronavirus deaths per day in Wuhan.]

As of February 10, China reported a total of 909 coronavirus deaths, among which 871 were from Hubei Province (including Wuhan City).

Related posting on Chinascope:

• Death Count: Wuhan Incinerated 122 Corpses Per Day Before Coronavirus Outbreak

Continue reading →

As people are concerned with the accuracy of the Chinese government’s posting of the death counts from the Coronavirus, an Internet posting calculated that, on average, Wuhan funeral homes incinerated 122 corpses per day before the outbreak of the epidemic. Using the number posted on the Funeral Association website, (administered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs), the article gathered the annual incineration counts from seven funeral houses in Wuhan. The total was 44,400 a year, or 122 per day. Continue reading →