On 28th June 2020, we are nearly half way through year 2020. Within 6 months of the first reported case of WUHAN Virus which eventually got renamed to COVID-19, we have crossed two unfortunate milestones of 10 million cases and 0.5 million deaths worldwide today. As entire world struggles to control the pandemic and recover economic losses from it. Let us look at where China, the country of origin of virus, stands today and how true the numbers are.
As per worldometers.info data, till 28th June 2020, China has reported total of 83,500 cases. It ranks 22nd in number of cases. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the only non-democratic countries above China. Does it mean that, democracy is the reason that governments couldn’t control the spread of virus? OR Democracy is the reason every country having more cases than China and others reported real numbers? Well, given the poor record of press freedom in China, the later argument for other countries appears true. The numbers coming from China have been questioned globally. In fact, if it was not for the 2 monarchies in the middle east, the Communist Party of China (CPC) propaganda news agencies across the world would be running propaganda articles explaining why Democracy is a threat to the world.
The numbers appear even more dodgy when we compare the data per million. At 58 per million, China ranks 151st in the world for cases/million, and at 3 per million, China is 143rd in the world for death/million. Remember, we are talking about worlds most populated country and a country where the virus has originated. In normal circumstances, the country that takes first blow to any unfortunate event is likely to suffer the most. With of 1.4 billion plus people the numbers for China appear very unrealistic. There are 2 possible scenarios from these highly questionable numbers coming from China. These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. There is a possibility of both scenarios to be true at the same time.
Scenario 1: China has not reported correct numbers for cases and deaths for virus
One cannot deny this observation, given the recent lousy attempts made by CPC mouthpiece global times, to cover up the deaths of their soldiers near China India border. Transparency in information sharing is virtually a one traffic for China regime. You are required to share much more information than required to use Chinese APPs and software, but when we try to access any information from China, The Great Cyber Wall of China stands in the middle. Remember how China successfully hid the thousands of deaths from 1975 Banqiao Dam Failure for 15 years only to be revealed partially in a book written by the then minister of waters of China in 1990 and declassifying it completely in 2005. We shouldn’t be surprised if 10 years from now one day, China suddenly reports millions of death in 2020 because of COVID19
Scenario 2: China is prepared well in advance with a vaccine to combat the spread of virus and waiting for right opportunity to go public with it
This is least possible and riskier scenario, because one can argue that even China has lost around 4000 people because of virus. And if this scenario turns out to be true in near future, China might face even stronger backlash from across the globe stating that it could have saved thousands of lives if it had released the vaccine in time. But we cannot deny it. The deaths in China looked huge until March and April. But as the virus started spreading across the world, today it has fallen from number 1 spot in January to number 143 for deaths/million. So, their countrymen would be satisfied with the regime in doing relatively lesser overall damage to the population. And with their propaganda websites in other countries, China has the ability to change the narrative from “China the virus spreader” to “China the savior”. The right opportunity that we are talking about is now. Only time will tell if China has that vaccine or not.
Now let us assume that China’s combat against COVID19 is really a success story as the number suggests. That China has actually emerged successful in containing the virus. The only way this can happen is through draconian military lockdown, which even China is not denying. But how can we believe that the side effects of such lockdown are 0. How come there is no chaos from mass migration like India? How come the deaths from police brutality are 0? Can the population of 1.4 billion be so disciplined that all guidelines are followed nearly 100%? Again, sounds very unreal to be true. And if it is true, then China is literally living under dictatorship.
To prove more that the success story of China is not as good as it looks, let us look at what happened after the unfortunate Galwan Valley incident where both the countries lost their armed forces. Immediately after the incident, the twitter handle of Global Times, one of the many platforms used to spread CPCs propaganda everywhere except China (ironically twitter is banned in China) was at its peak uploading videos with the People Liberation Army’s (PLA) capability to perform some standard military maneuvers. These maneuvers are not at all impressive and far from being called as extraordinary. Only childish regime would run these kinds of videos on their websites. But the real question is, why the same propaganda handles are not publishing videos that showcases its success in combating virus. Is CPC mouth piece so foolish to think that assembling a gun in blindfolded, moving tanks in mountains is more difficult then controlling a virus spread in your country? China claims to have performed 90 million tests. If we believe it to be true, this is 3 times more than United States, the country with second largest number of tests. Why is taking so long for China to share its ability(if any) to perform so many tests with rest of the world? How can a country dream of becoming superpower when it cannot share its success story to rest of the world that would save lives? Sounds shoddy. Isn’t it? To conclude, we must not forget that, the COVID19 virus is here to stay for longer time. It doesn’t distinguish in colour, race, religion, nationality, orientation, gender. The world has suffered huge loss because of the virus. The common Chinese population in China and overseas has also suffered a lot from this virus. However recent handling of COVID19 spread by the CPC proves that the biological war threat from the closed doors regimes like China are more lethal than conventional warfare. We should continue to ask tough questions to the China’s CCP regime. The countries of world should come together to draft a strong framework that is independent of the governments and that will help to identify on the root cause of such catastrophes much faster in future.
