Recently, after the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, Hubei Province, Shenzhen also  found a case of severe pneumonia of unknown origin. The government announced on Sunday (January 12) that the possibility of SARS and a coronavirus infection have been ruled out. However, due to the authorities’ manner of epidemiological investigation, coupled with the opaqueness of government information, the people’s distrust has continued to spread.

A hospital in Shenzhen issued a notice Sunday about a 41-year-old female patient who is of Indian nationality and teaches at a local international school. The notice stated that, after Shenzhen did some testing, CDC, influenza, bird flu, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and the new coronavirus that was recently discovered in Wuhan have been ruled out.

To this end, Radio Free Asia called the hospital in question, but the doctor declined to be interviewed on the grounds that the situation was unclear. The local district health bureau in Shenzhen said that the above-mentioned pathogens have been ruled out, but it did not say that it was a new type of pneumonia; it was just a case of severe pneumonia. At present, the pathogen of this severe pneumonia case does not have a clear target, so it is not possible to sequence the pathogen genetically. The only conclusion is that it is a severe pulmonary infection. The official also said that, due to the rapid development of the disease, screening was performed for several known conditions. He was not sure that they belonged to a specific disease.

In order to achieve social control, the Chinese government controls important information releases, including any animal epidemic disclosures. Thus this has, by law, been classified as a state secret. Based on the logic of maintaining stability, concealment of information about the epidemic has become the norm. The government’s concealment of the SARS epidemic in 2003 led to catastrophic consequences.

Source: Radio Free Asia, January 13, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/cn-shenzhen-01132020101348.html

Radio Free Asia (RFA) Chinese Edition recently reported that, based on the numbers that the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics released, as of November, provincial governments had across the board deficits, including some wealthy provinces. Even Shanghai, the most financially sound city, had a deficit of RMB 40 billion (around US$5.8 billion). Beijing had a deficit of over RMB 100 billion. The worst cases were Sichuan and Henan provinces. Each had a deficit that was five times that of Beijing’s. Several provincial governments have already issued internal orders to reduce spending immediately. The city of Shenzhen (part of Guangdong Province) which is not yet on the deficit list, is also cutting government spending drastically. Most of the items on the budget were forced to take a minimum ten percent cut. In practice, however, many local government branches have found it really hard to reduce spending. Some have even requested budget increases.

Source: RFA Chinese, January 10, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/wul0110b-01102020042302.html

United Daily News (UDN), one of the primary Taiwanese news groups, recently reported that commercial real estate, especially office buildings, have been suffering the highest vacancy rates lately across all Chinese major cities. According to data that China Finance Online (NASDAQ: JRJC) provided, the city of Shenzhen suffered a top-tier office building vacancy rate of 22.4 percent in the third quarter of 2019. In some areas the vacancy rate reached 50 percent. In the first half of 2019, in the most valuable locations of Shenzhen, the vacancy rate, at one point, reached 65.7 percent. For decades, Shenzhen has been the most rapidly growing Chinese city. For Q3 of 2019, the vacancy rate for Beijing was 19.5 percent and it was 10.9 percent in Shanghai. For the same period of time, it was 4.8 percent, 4 percent, 3.8 percent and 0.7 percent for Singapore, London, San Francisco and Tokyo, respectively. Analysts expressed the belief that the US-China trade war was the issue. The result was that, in major Chinese cities, a large number of companies have held back from renting offices. Second-tier cities suffered more. Key provincial capital cities typically saw office buildings having average vacancy rates above 30 percent.

Source: UDN, January 8, 2020
https://opinion.udn.com/opinion/story/120611/4275380