Residents Yell It’s ‘All Fake’ Regarding China’s Coronavirus Recovery

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According to reports from Yahoo News, the Global Times, and Townhall.com, residents and whistleblowers in China have called the country’s coronavirus recovery into question.

China has recently claimed zero new coronavirus cases. This report of zero new coronavirus cases has “sparked celebration across the globe,” but questions remain whether the information is reliable. Earlier today, we published an article suggesting five reasons to question the reliability of China’s report.

The communist regime in China is accused of controlling the media and pushing propaganda state-wide.

Civil servants claim that Chinese businesses “are actually faking these numbers” in regards to the recovery. Although Beijing officials have reportedly started to check electricity consumption levels of businesses, residents claim that business “would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials.” Businesses are also falsifying staff attendance logs as well, the report claims.

From Yahoo News:

Beijing has spent much of the outbreak pushing districts to carry on business as usual, with some local governments subsidizing electricity costs and even installing mandatory productivity quotas. Zhejiang, a province east of the epicenter city of Wuhan, claimed as of Feb. 24 it had restored 98.6 percent of its pre-coronavirus work capacity.

But civil servants tell Caixan that businesses are actually faking these numbers. Beijing had started checking Zhejiang businesses’ electricity consumption levels, so district officials ordered the companies to start leaving their lights and machinery on all day to drive the numbers up, one civil servant said. Businesses have reportedly falsified staff attendance logs as well — they “would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials,” Caixan writes. (Yahoo News)

Citing Caixan, a report from Townhall.com adds that surveys have been filmed with residents yelling at the visiting leaders that “it’s all fake.” Local officials allegedly make special efforts to give “central leaders” the impression that recovery efforts are going well.

According to Caixan, local officials make special efforts to give ‘central leaders’ the impression that recovery efforts are going well and those tasked with taking care of quarantined residents are doing their job, but some of these surveys have been filmed with residents yelling at the visiting leaders that “it’s all fake,” which is what happened when Vice Premier Sun Chunlan and her entourage toured Wuhan earlier this month.

The Global Times adds:

The residents complained that the community’s property management was pretending to ask volunteers to deliver vegetables and meat to the residents but were actually not, according to media reports.

The central government guide group then ordered the local government to investigate and solve the problem immediately. It also called on a meeting soon after the incident to urge local governments ensure material supply for residents during the coronavirus outbreak. (Global Times)

The People’s Daily is accused of reporting the encounter, but then deleting the report. BBC’s China Correspondent, Stephen McDonell, reported on Twitter, “Wow! Somebody at the People’s Daily accidentally committed journalism and now the post has been deleted. Oops!”

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