China’s Response to Surging COVID-19 Crisis Echoes Wuhan: Chinese Dissident

The CCP has turned back the clock to 'Wuhan in early 2020'

Medical personnel walking among patients with mild symptoms of the COVID-19 coronavirus resting at night in the temporary Hospital set up in a sports stadium in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, on Feb. 18, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Online posts show that China’s major cities have been hit hard by the recent pandemic outbreak, following the sudden end of China’s strict COVID-19 containment measures. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. Corpses are piled up in mortuaries. Long queues of hearses are waiting outside crematories.

“After three years of stringent zero-COVID policies, the CCP has turned the whole country into Wuhan in early 2020,” Zhao Lanjian, a Chinese dissident and former investigative reporter, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Dec. 26.

Nearly three years ago, the pandemic first broke out in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei Province.

China’s response to the rapidly spreading virus was inconsistent, and it was impossible to get accurate information about the scope of the crisis.

Shortly after the pandemic broke out at the end of 2019, authorities refused to cancel a large banquet for over 40,000 families to celebrate the Chinese New Year. By the time the city went into lockdown on Jan. 23, 2020, more than 5 million people had left the city of 11 million residents without being screened for the virus, according to the then-mayor of Wuhan.

Further aggravating the situation, though the communist regime banned domestic travel, it kept international travel open, allowing the virus to spread from China to the rest of the world.

Dissident Slams Lack of Transparency

Zhao Lanjian, an investigative reporter from China, is known for his reporting on China’s environmental issues, including air and water pollution. Earlier this year, after bringing attention to the captivity of a mother of eight who was found shackled in a Chinese village, he was harassed by police and ultimately fled China for the United States.

Zhao blasted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its censorship of information.

“A Beijing funeral parlor has issued a notice, prohibiting its staff members from disclosing any information related to cremations. This control of information is more horrific than the pandemic itself,” Zhao said.

The notice referred to by Zhao was reportedly published by Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Parlor and leaked online.

The notice prohibits staff members from disclosing any information related to cremations.

“Everyone is strictly forbidden from receiving interviews by any media or organization, from discussing, explaining, or disclosing any data of the parlor and its work and operation. It is strictly forbidden to take photos of, edit, post, or send work information via messages, emails, WeChat conversations, or on Weibo,” the notice reads.

The Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times reached out to Beijing Dongjiao Funeral Parlor. A staff member answering the call refused to comment on the number of cremations. He said that he had not received such a notice, adding that he must report all media inquiries to his seniors.

Overwhelmed Funeral Parlors Across China

Funeral parlors are reportedly working overtime in China. Many online video clips show long queues outside crematories in China’s northeastern Liaoning Province and in major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. Netizens have posted video footage showing containers being used to store dead bodies in China’s southwestern Sichuan Province and parking lots used to store bodies in northeastern Liaoning Province.

A funeral parlor in Tangshan City, China’s central Hebei Province, collapsed after its furnace burned bodies at the rate of one body every 20 minutes, according to a video clip online.

Zhao cited Beijing Tongzhou Funeral Parlor as an example to show how the CCP is attempting to cover up the true number of deaths.

Prior to December, he said, the funeral parlor had cremated an average of 40 bodies per day. Starting Dec. 19, it has cremated 140 to 160 bodies a day, four times its usual workload.

Workers in protective gear handle a coffin and coffin case at Dongjiao Funeral Parlor in Beijing on Dec. 19, 2022. Bloomberg via Getty Images

However, the CCP’s official death toll tells a different story. China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a mere 12 deaths from Dec. 1 to Dec. 27.

Revised Standards for COVID-19 Reporting

Chinese netizens aren’t buying the official numbers. Increasingly, they’re going online to expose the way the regime is recording COVID-19 deaths.

A netizen posted a notice that requires families of the deceased to write the cause of death as not being related to COVID.

People applying for a death certificate have to sign a statement reading, “I guarantee that the deceased [the dead person’s name] didn’t die of COVID. If there is any concealment, I am willing to bear all responsibilities.”

The angry netizen blasted: “[The CCP] uses such dirty tricks to control the mortality rate of COVID!”

The Epoch Times wasn’t able to independently verify the post’s authenticity.

Another netizen, who goes by the username Andy, wrote: “Today I went to apply for the death certificate of a relative who passed away. [The government staffer] didn’t allow me to write COVID or fever. I was allowed to write whatever I’d like to, as long as it has nothing to do with COVID-19.”

Crematories Across China Overwhelmed

On Dec. 27, The Epoch Times reached out to multiple crematories in provinces across China and heard the same story from each: they are overwhelmed.

Wuhan (central China): A staff member at Hankou Funeral Parlor in Wuhan, answering a call from The Epoch Times, replied that staff are working under great pressure. “We’re working 24 hours every day, and there are so many incoming calls that clients can’t get through most of the time,” he said.

The staffer added that after a body is sent to the crematory, it takes five days for the funeral home to contact family members to reclaim the ashes. “The ashes won’t be mixed up, because each furnace burns one corpse,” he added.

Chengdu City (southwestern China): A staffer at Chengdu’s Dongjiao Funeral Parlor told The Epoch Times that the waiting time for cremation is five days.

The staffer didn’t answer the publication’s question about the number of corpses the funeral parlor cremates daily. However, she said that cremators work from 1 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day, with only five hours of rest.

Shijiazhuang City (northeastern China): Mr. Li (pseudonym), a government employee in Shijiazhuang, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that the workload at a local crematory has increased tenfold. “Their normal workload is cremating 30 to 40 bodies daily, which has increased to 300 to 400 a day recently. The bodies to be cremated are so many that they have to refer what they can’t burn to other funeral homes in nearby counties,” Li said.

The crematory employee who was the source of Li’s information said many of the deceased were middle-aged people.

Concern About International Spread

Li Hengqing, a China expert at Washington’s Research Institute for Information and Strategy, expressed his concerns over the possible spread of COVID-19 from China to other countries. With the end of zero-COVID measures, China is opening up its borders, allowing Chinese to travel overseas and lifting all quarantine requirements for inbound international travelers starting Jan. 8.

“According to China’s CDC, there are more than 100 subvariants of Omicron, which are new to the international communities,” Li said in an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister company NTD on Dec. 28. “There is a serious concern that the consequences could be disastrous once the new subvariants spreads to other countries. It may be very likely that we would go back to where we were three years ago when the pandemic initially broke out.”

Xia Song, Luo Ya, Zhao Fenghua, and Hong Ning contributed to this report.