James Adams:
“…The Chinese government would have the world believe that the coronavirus is under control and the risks of it spreading to the rest of us is minimal. But foreign governments and intelligence agencies believe that China has been lying about the extent of the epidemic and continues to deny the truth about the numbers of dead and infected.
Judging by leaked videos on social media that purportedly show the dead lying untended in the street, bodies wrapped in sheets lying on benches and crematoriums working 24/7 with bodies unceremoniously stuffed into ovens with no burial rites, millions of Chinese people appear to agree with the foreign assessments.
The official story goes like this: when the new variant of the coronavirus first emerged early last month, the Chinese government moved swiftly to contain the outbreak by quarantining the city of Wuhan with a population of 11 million where the disease was first detected. Over the next three weeks, the quarantine expanded to include 15 other cities with a total population of around 56 million…
…Even a superficial examination of the official Chinese numbers suggest they are minimizing a problem that seems — so far — to be uncontrollable. If 56 million people are in quarantine with only 723 deaths, the problem is minuscule and the government is seriously overreacting. For comparison, out of America’s population of 329 million, the Centers for Disease Control says that in the 2018-19 flu season 43 million people were infected, 647,000 hospitalized and 61,000 died. Yet, despite the heavy casualties, the US has never considered quarantining 4 percent of the population as China has now done…
…Inside China, reliable reporting free of government censorship is not possible. Already a number of commentators and journalists have been arrested for questioning the party line and any social media posts critical of the government are swiftly taken down…
…Nowhere is this ambivalence to the military’s involvement reflected more graphically than within China’s government and business community. In the past few weeks, international donors have offered billions in aid to help combat the spread of the virus. But, in dozens of instances, donors have been advised to keep their money until the virus is contained, which will be months from now. Outside of official government propaganda, there is a recognition that donor money would simply be wasted because of corruption in agencies within China and the inability of anyone to deliver much of anything to the infected areas, especially medicine and food…
…If nobody seems to accept the official line of few deaths and low infection numbers, what is the true story? The short answer is that when an authoritarian regime controls all media outlets and arrests anyone who talks outside the party line, truth is hard to discover. The Japanese government, which has very good sources in China, has told other governments that it believes hundreds of thousands may have been infected and thousands may already be dead…
…Even if the coronavirus can be contained, the damage to the Chinese government’s credibility inside the country and on the global stage will be long-lasting. From the start of the epidemic just four weeks ago, literally nobody outside of China has believed the official story and the propaganda becomes less believable as each day passes…”