The director Wang Jingguang, the actor Fu Zucheng, the screenwriter Ni Zhen, the actor Gong Jintang, the footballer Wang Ruoji… Several Chinese personalities have died in recent weeks, without revealing the cause of their death, or, as in the case of Ni Zhen, which does not mention anything other than “illness”.
These deaths, which have some visibility, create questions on Chinese social networks, reports the BBC, The Guardian and the American medium Semafor. In fact, the Chinese authorities report very few deaths from Covid-19, especially for a population of 1.4 billion.
Since January 1, for example, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported just two deaths from Covid-19.
Netizens wonder
On Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, some netizens say that these numbers are unrepresentative after the deaths of so many well-known people:
“Whether they are academics or celebrities… or my family and close friends, I really feel that many people died, but experts still say that it was not like that,” considers one person, for example, according to the guardian.
The newspaper transcribed another comment: “I beg adults who cannot see the ants on the ground to see how many people have died from Covid. How many people who have done so much for this country have died?
WHO calls for transparency
Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, did not say otherwise on Wednesday: “We believe that the current figures published in China underestimate the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and especially in terms of deaths.
Discontent seems to have been rising in China for several weeks now, a rare phenomenon in this country where freedoms are restricted. At the end of November, demonstrations of an unprecedented magnitude in years broke out in certain cities, including Canton, to denounce the severity of the “covid zero” policy carried out by Beijing.
Sanitary restrictions were then suddenly relaxed, triggering a significant epidemic rebound, which however is difficult to quantify with certainty.
Source: BFM TV
