Local officials in China have been accused of not reporting data on COVID-19 positive cases in fear of a backlash from Beijing. Instead, the authorities have extended the draconian lockdown policies in an attempt to contain the virus. Some experts have called China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy a measure driven by political motives.
An independent analyst in the United States and expert on China, Shi Shan, told The Epoch Times that local officials in Shanghai would be held accountable for positive COVID-19 cases in their jurisdictions. As a result, many have chosen to conceal or grossly underreport the data in their region or resorted to extreme lockdown measures to contain the virus as quickly as possible.
According to Shi, these local officials knew that the Omicron variant of the CCP virus has a low mortality rate, and symptoms are often mild. Yet, many of them fudged the data out of fear of being dismissed from their posts.
China’s health code app is a key resource for the country’s governments to track and contain COVID-19 cases using time, location, and personal interactions. The health code indicates a person’s COVID-19 status and must be shown to enter venues or travel.
“My next-door neighbor’s [COVID-19] test result showed negative on the [Shanghai government’s] health code app, but received a phone call from the local testing site saying it was positive,” Wang Jie (pseudonym), a resident in Shanghai’s Jing’an District, told The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times reporter reached out to a local healthcare committee in Jing’an District regarding the discrepancy in notification between the health code app and the local testing site. A committee staff member said the telephone results from the local testing site would “override” the results shown on the government’s health app.
When asked if there was any possibility of data fraud from the local testing sites to the government’s health cloud, the party hung up the phone.
“They said the lockdown would be lifted on April 7, but I received another notice on that day, saying it has been extended for another five days …” Ding Hui (pseudonym), a resident of Changchun City, Jilin Province, told The Epoch Times.
“It appears that [the CCP] does not care whether the people live or die. They just insist on clearing the virus. They control all the data; we don’t know if it’s real or not,” Ding added.
Zhang Hai, whose family member died from the CCP virus, told The Epoch Times that it had been over two years since the first outbreak in Wuhan, yet the actual number of deaths from the CCP virus is still a mystery.
Zhang said that there are many cases of secondary injury and loss of life due to the inhumane lockdowns from all across China, but no media in China dares to report them.
China current affairs commentator, Lu Jinnan (pseudonym), told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s “zero-COVID” policy is unrealistic. Local officials may be dismissed from their posts wherever an outbreak is reported. Thus, they can only choose between their job and data fraud.
According to Lu, lockdowns have become a measure driven by political motives. Since February this year, the spread of the virus has far exceeded the CCP’s expectations. The regime has punished or dismissed many local or regional officials for their ineffectiveness in preventing outbreaks within their jurisdictions.
On March 1, six Guangdong Province officials, including Huang Shouying, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, and Wang Changqing, the deputy mayor of Dongguan City, were allegedly removed from their posts for their ineffectiveness at containing the CCP virus outbreaks.
In March, at least 18 officials in Jilin Province received punishment for reportedly similar reasons. Five officials, including the mayor of Jilin, were dismissed from their posts.
Likewise, last month, Inner Mongolia’s Manzhouli City Deputy Mayor, Jiao Jie, and Director of Transportation Zheng Fuyong, 17 officials in Shandong Province and 22 officials in Liaoning Province, and at least 31 officials in Shaanxi Province’s Xi’an City, were either punished, dismissed, or suspended from their posts.
