@Hong Kong Saint @chinasaint
@Susan
I know Susan doesn’t live there anymore but might be still have friends there.
Any news being on correct figures being edited coming out of China?
Is China lying about the number of dead? - Tough one.
What I’ll say in their defence (if that’s the right word), is that when the government says ‘jump’, the people f*cking jump. And they do it because of an almost obsessive national pride, the desire to fall in line with rest of society, and now because they have this Orwellian social credit system in place (rack up too many points, and you can’t even buy train tickets, your internet will be cut off, your kids will be stopped from attending certain schools, and even, so I’ve heard, you will be banned from keeping a bloody pet in your house!). ‘Lockdown’ in China means lockdown. None of this, “I’ll walk the dogs, go for a run, take some biscuits to auntie Nora, and then go to M&S for some toilet rolls” type of Western ‘lockdown’. And it doesn’t require streets lined with soldiers to enforce it in China. The fear of shaming yourself and your family is enough.
I teach 60-70 Chinese students online every week. So I see them living their daily lives, and some of these guys literally have not stepped out of the front door for almost three months.
Now, what makes me suspicious of the numbers, is that the Chinese government is so damn paranoid of losing control of the people, that their propaganda machine is phenomenal. It is - make no mistake - the single most dangerous weapon in the world right now. And this propaganda didn’t just start this year, last year, or at any other specific time. It’s always been there. It is so ingrained in the average Chinese person’s thinking, that they do not even question it. What the Chinese state-controlled media reports, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. If the numbers of dead in Wuhan were so significant that it would have risked causing social unrest in China, then those numbers would NOT have been reported. That’s just how it is. And whistleblowers in China either disappear or end up dead.
My honest opinion; I think the government there have told lies about the numbers, for sure. But, at the same time, their system of rule (whether right or wrong ethically), is perfectly suited to this type of situation.


