(Minghui.org) As the United States and many other countries take urgent actions to stem the coronavirus pandemic, China said its number of new cases has dropped close to zero. For example, only four new cases were reported in Hubei on March 13, 2020, and all of them occurred in Wuhan.
“Broadly speaking, the peak of the epidemic has passed for China,” declared Mi Feng, a spokesman for the National Health Commission, on March 12, 2020.
Independent investigations by numerous news media show another story.
“The government kept saying many communities have no new cases... this is different from what I saw in the hospital today,” said Wuhan resident Zhang Yi as reported by Voice of America (VOA) on March 10, 2020.
Zhang was accompanying his mother, who had severe heart disease, at the Emergency Department of a local heart hospital when he was interviewed on the phone by the VOA reporter. He said one patient in front of him and his mother tested positive for coronavirus while trying to seek treatment for a heart condition. The patient was then directed to go to a quarantine facility.
The ER staff revealed that they saw such cases almost every day – people who had been quarantined at home all along and had not shown any symptoms tested positive when they came to the heart hospital for other conditions. Zhang doubted if such cases were ever included in the official report and said, “The situation is horrifying. All those asymptomatic people could be virus carriers, but we wouldn't know unless everyone in Wuhan was tested for the coronavirus.”
When Vice Premier Sun Chunlan and local officials visited Wuhan on March 5, 2020, several residents called out, “Fake, fake!” “It’s all fake!”
The Guardian reported on this incident on March 6 in an article titled “‘Fake, Fake': senior Chinese leader heckled by residents on visit to coronavirus city.” The residents said officials only pretended to deliver vegetables and meat for the inspection.
“What were they shouting? They were shouting the truth. For years, when these high-level meetings or inspections took place, those who would tell the truth would be sent away or shut up,” quoted The Guardian of a netizen in China.
After this incident in the Kaiyuan Community, neighborhood officials followed up with residents, soliciting opinions and claiming their concerns would be addressed. Two days later, gates where local residents could receive packages or orders—either food or daily necessities—were all sealed.
When Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) top leader, visited Wuhan on March 10, no such shouts were heard.
“Police officers were standing at our balconies blocking us from watching,” wrote one resident in Tingyuan Community. Several other residents had similar accounts.
Another resident said he did not know who was visiting the area. “There are snipers in place on all the building rooftops. And all traffic has been halted,” he wrote.
“It was revealed that local authorities had dispatched plainclothes and special duty officers to every household in the residential quarter to be visited by Xi, and deployed snipers on rooftops of all buildings in the vicinity,” reported Asia Times on March 11 in an article with the title of “Xi’s trip to Wuhan fails to restore confidence.”
Not everyone was quiet during Xi’s visit. Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported a video circulating online during the inspection. As Xi’s limo arrived at Tingyuan Community, several people dressed in black welcomed him. Xi then got out after three other officials.
“Can I call out now?” asked a female voice in the video. But there was no answer. After a while, one officer who welcomed Xi gave a signal by waving one arm backward.
“Can I start now?” the female voice asked again.
“Yes,” another female replied.
In the video, both women called aloud from the building, “Greetings to Chairman Xi, Greetings to Chairman Xi. Go Wuhan! Go China!” Xi then greeted back.
“Many netizens pointed out that this indicates actresses were assigned to portray ordinary residents for this task,” reported RFI.
After the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in April 1986, the Soviet Union did not alert the public until two days later. China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak was similar: although the epidemic was known in December 2019, China's CDC did not inform the public about it until January 20, 2020.
As of March 14, 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has spread to over 150 countries and territories, with a least 5,800 deaths.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said he considers Chernobyl one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed in 1991. He said when he was young, he used to be fervent about communism because it claimed “justice” and “equality.”
“But in reality, that terrible communist experiment brought about the repression of human dignity. Violence was used in order to impose that model on society. In the name of Communism we abandoned basic human values,” he explained. “So when I came to power in Russia, I started to restore those values, values of ‘openness’ and freedom.”
The tragedy nonetheless still continues in China. One reader recently wrote to Minghui.org that his niece-in-law was from Wuhan and she recently called relatives in the region. “People in a nearby village were all infected by the coronavirus. Officials did not provide treatment but instead blocked off the entire village,” his niece-in-law was told.
Once every few days, people would be dispatched to check in with every household. “If someone answered the door, they would leave; otherwise, they would break in and carry the bodies away to a huge pit that had been dug for immediate burial,” she was told. “The pit is huge and it could hold at least hundreds of people.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, once wrote, “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”
China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party is no different than the Gulag Archipelago, and the weight of its own lies will eventually bring about its collapse.