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CHINA INSIDER

WeeK 16, 2020

SPOTLIGHT ON ZOOM

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ConCerns Mount After revelAtion thAt

App sends soMe dAtA to ChinA

The Zoom logo on display at the NASDAQ

MarketSite in Times Square in New York on

April 18, 2019.

As China Begins to Lift Re-strictions, Fears Mount of

2nd Wave Virus Outbreak 4

Week 16, 2020 Week 16, 20202 | CHINA INSIDER CHINA INSIDER | 3

Bowen Xiao

ideo-conferencing app Zoom, which has surged

in popularity amid the global CCP virus pandem-

ic, is facing mounting pri-vacy and security concerns

after research reports and the CEO’s disclosure revealed its encryption keys were being transmitted to servers in China in some cases.

The backlash reached a crescendo recently with Taiwan’s recent banning of any government use of Zoom, citing security concerns. The April 7 measure marked the first time a government had imposed a formal action against the company.

In the United States, a similar picture is emerging. Experts told The Epoch Times that concerns related to Zoom’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party are absolutely warranted.

Watchdog group Citizen Lab recently examined Zoom’s encryption during multiple test calls in North America, in which they found keys for encrypting and decrypting meetings were “trans-mitted to servers in Beijing.” The report stated that Zoom used “non-industry-standard cryptographic techniques with identifiable weaknesses.”

“An app with easily-identifiable limi-tations in cryptography, security issues, and offshore servers located in China [that] handle meeting keys, presents a clear target to reasonably well-re-sourced nation-state attackers, includ-ing the People’s Republic of China,” the authors wrote in their April 3 report.

The app has gained immense popu-larity in recent weeks as millions of Americans under lockdown are required to work from home. Head-quartered in San Jose, California, Zoom reached more than 200 million daily users worldwide in March, a mas-sive increase from the 10 million daily participants at the end of December.

Zoom also appears to own three com-panies in China, the report states, add-ing that according to a recent SEC fil-ing, the company, through its Chinese affiliates, “employs at least 700 em-ployees in China that work in ‘research and development.’” This arrangement, researchers noted, “may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.”

Casey Fleming, chairman and CEO of intelligence and security strategy firm BlackOps Partners, said Americans should be very wary of any software or hardware created or manufactured in China.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completely controls all production and exploits every opportunity to steal intellectual property and innovation through every means possible,” Flem-ing told The Epoch Times. “Economic espionage is part of the CCP’s grand

strategy of Hybrid Competition (War-fare) to defeat the United States, capi-talism, and democracy to ultimately control the world.

“The world is waking up to how ruth-less and evil the Chinese Communist Party really is and their true inten-tions,” he said. “Recent CCP actions and statements reveal this point. The CCP is very much like a nefarious and dysfunctional crime family running a nation-state.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Zoom for comment but didn’t receive a response.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security said in a positively worded memo that the company had been responsive to the concerns raised about its software, according to Reuters. The memo was recently distributed to top government cybersecurity officials.

Growing ScrutinyZoom CEO Eric Yuan admitted in an April 3 blog post that the company “mistakenly” added servers for the app in China.

“In our urgency to come to the aid of people around the world during this unprecedented pandemic, we added server capacity and deployed it quickly—starting in China, where the outbreak began,” Yuan said. “In that process, we failed to fully implement our usual geo-fencing best practices. As a result, it is possible certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect.”

In February, to handle an increase in demand, Yuan said Zoom added two of its Chinese data centers “to a lengthy whitelist of backup bridges, potentially enabling non-Chinese clients to—under extremely limited circumstances—connect to them (namely when the primary non-Chinese servers were unavailable).”

He added that Zoom “immediately took the mainland China data centers off of the whitelist of secondary backup bridges for users outside of China” after learning about the oversight.

In an October 2017 interview with Medium, Yuan said he decided to move to the United States in the mid-1990s because of the growing internet wave, which he said had not taken off in China. He said he got his U.S. visa on

his ninth attempt.“The first time I applied for a U.S. visa,

I was rejected,” Yuan said. “I contin-ued to apply again and again over the course of two years, and finally re-ceived my visa on the ninth try.”

The FBI also warned about Zoom’s security vulnerabilities in a March post saying there were reports of video calls being hacked with “pornographic and/or hate images, and threatening language.” The Justice Department also issued a similar release.

Experts said the criticisms they have seen against the app are similar to the ones about the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, which is facing a national security review.

On April 3, a group of 19 House law-makers sent a letter to Yuan asking him to “shed light” on the company’s data collection practices, including informa-tion on attendee attention tracking, cloud recording, and automatic tran-scriptions of conferences.

And according to The New York Times, New York Attorney General Le-titia James asked Yuan in a letter about the new security measures that Zoom has put in place. The New York City De-partment of Education has also banned teachers from using the app.

Zoom is dealing with a heavy load of backlash against a “multi-faceted and often mind-boggling shortsightedness with regard to user privacy and the overall security of its platform,” At-tila Tomaschek, data privacy expert at ProPrivacy, told The Epoch Times.

“Beijing theoretically could demand that the encryption keys for those calls be handed over for decryption by Chinese authorities, allowing them full access to the contents of those calls and the ability to listen in on supposedly private conversations,” he said.

Meanwhile, Zoom was hit with a class-action lawsuit by shareholder Mi-chael Drieu, who accused the company of overstating its privacy standards and failing to disclose that its service wasn’t end-to-end encrypted.

Also, Google on April 8 banned the use of Zoom on employee computers, citing security concerns. A spokesper-son told The Hill the move was part of Google’s longstanding policy of not allowing the use of “unapproved apps for work.”

The fact that Zoom effectively gave Chinese authorities access to the call data of users in North America, well outside the normal reach of the com-munist regime, “raises the alarm to a whole new level,” Tomaschek said.

“[Zoom] represents a particularly at-tractive target for government agencies in gathering intelligence,” he added. “When the company quite literally hands over the keys to an authoritarian government, it presents massive issues with regard to user trust and its overall security practices.”

CYBERSECURITY

Millions of Americans Using ‘Zoom,’ Which Sends Some Data to China

Bowen Xiao

The Chinese regime re-sponded to the pan-demic by covering up and silencing whistle-blowers, then when it

was too late to ignore, it enacted brutal, draconian measures on its own citizens—all while propagan-da was spread internally through state-run media.

The U.S. response meanwhile was humane, spotlighting the contrast between a free society’s handling of a crisis versus that of a tyrannical regime. Experts told The Epoch Times that free speech and freedom itself is core to how effectively a government responds to crisis, emphasizing the values of transparency and compassion.

During the early stages of the CCP virus outbreak, which first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) muzzled and arrest-ed doctors, citizen journalists, scholars, and business people who sought to expose the truth about the virus.

Li Zehua, a former anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, was the third video blogger ar-rested in the outbreak epicenter of Wuhan. His story is just one of many similar stories of cen-sorship as documented by The Epoch Times.

“I don’t want to shut my eyes and ears. ... I’m doing this so that more young people like me can stand up,” Li, 25, said in a passionate speech live-streamed on YouTube before police entered a hotel he was staying in and presumably detained him.

He at first refused to let them in. He turned his camera on and be-gan alluding to the student-led Ti-ananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989, which came to a bloody end after Beijing deployed tanks and guns. “I feel that it’s unlikely that I will not be taken away and quarantined,” he said, shortly be-fore he opened the door.

The police confiscated his phone and laptop and cut off the signal.

Justin Haskins, editorial director of The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, said the CCP consistently puts itself above the needs of the Chinese people, and the rest of the world, too.

“The coronavirus crisis is no dif-ferent,” he told The Epoch Times. “Evidence clearly shows the Com-munist Party silenced people concerned about the spread of the virus to protect its own inter-ests, and as a result, it’s very likely thousands of people have died who otherwise would not have.”

A China insider told The Ep-och Times in January that public health authorities also attempted to cover up the severity of the virus by limiting the number of diagnos-tic kits sent to Wuhan hospitals.

As the number of CCP virus cases grew and officials couldn’t cen-sor everything, officials in Wuhan began sealing the buildings and doors of residents.

One of these residents, a father of two who wasn’t allowed to leave his apartment because his father was diagnosed, wondered how many more days he could carry on, citing a shortage of cash and skyrocketing food prices.

Chinese authorities have also shut down the internet in some areas. Commentators believe the authorities have been using this method to restrict netizens’ ability to talk freely about what’s happen-ing on the ground.

Draconian TacticsThere are countless examples of the CCP’s draconian actions against its own citizens; The Epoch Times has reported on many of them. Bei-jing has deliberately masked the total number of COVID-19 cases in China in a bid to safeguard its image both nationally and inter-nationally.

In March, in the commercial district of Humen town in Dong-guan city, which is lined with shops belonging to middle- and high-end fashion brands, riot po-lice were deployed by the CCP to “take care” of merchants and pun-ish them for still operating, footage showed. Store owners struggled to pay their rent.

In Xiaogan city, Hubei Province, residents were mandated to buy food through community manag-ers, but some purchased cheaper vegetables through their own per-sonal network and had the food delivered. A community manager reported these residents, spurring Chinese police to arrive and ar-rest them. Residents were outraged upon seeing the police and orga-nized a group protest.

In one Wuhan community, footage showed local cadres giv-ing food to residents—but this was limited to one free apple per household. Chinese citizens also complained about being treated like animals at Wuhan’s many checkpoints

In one case, footage showed an old man being beaten by Chinese security forces because he tried to pass a checkpoint after failing to provide his QR code.

In yet another example of China’s thuggish tactics, a family of four in Anlu City, Hubei Province, was publicly humiliated and paraded through the streets by police on Feb. 14 for playing poker at home. Police also ordered them to pub-licly read out a “repentance” let-

ter afterward. After reading the statement, the family was forced to stand for a long period of time be-fore being allowed to return home.

When a system of government puts the welfare of the collective before the rights of individuals, “human rights abuses always fol-low, and that’s exactly what has happened in China,” said Haskins, who is also the editor-in-chief of Stopping Socialism.

“The Communist Party isn’t interested in protecting human rights, and it never has been. Its primary goal is always to maintain its own power, at any cost,” Haskins said. “You’ll see gov-erning officials say and do what-ever it takes—including lie—to keep people from doubting their role in society.”

Corruption is also rampant in ty-rannical societies like Beijing. In one instance, surveillance foot-age depicted local Chinese offi-cials allegedly looting a grocery store in Wuhan, triggering a wave of anger online. At one point, the owner tried to close the shop, but was stopped by a Chinese officer who let his colleagues in to take more goods.

In February, the Wuhan govern-ment also began to send CCP virus patients with mild or moderate symptoms to makeshift hospitals with inhumane conditions. These hospitals, set up in places such as stadiums and school gyms, are rampant with unsanitary condi-tions and lack medicines and treat-ment, videos posted by patients have revealed.

Some trapped inside were on the edge of a mental breakdown and began to destroy furniture out of frustration and anger. Others be-gan fighting with each other.

Free SpeechSarah Repucci, vice president of research and analysis at the U.S.-based human rights group Freedom House, said that in an emergency situation, free speech “enables the government to learn the reality of what is happening and respond more quickly.”

“If people don’t feel safe speaking out, they’re less likely to spread in-formation that is crucial for help-ing to contain the pandemic,” she told The Epoch Times. “The solu-

tion to misinformation is not to censor.”

Although many countries still struggle to handle the pandemic effectively, Repucci said that with time, “free societies are more likely to keep restrictions proportion-ate and limited in duration to the health threat.”

I don’t want to shut my eyes and ears. … I’m doing this so that more young people like me can stand up. Li Zehua, former anchor, CCTV

“Less free societies are more like-ly to use the emergency to justify repression that consolidates their power,” she said. “That is the risk for the long term.”

China ranks 177 out of 180 in the 2019 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. The regime is also expelling U.S. jour-nalists based in China who work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washing-ton Post, highlighting the coun-try’s dismal track record on press freedom.

Etienne Deffarges, health care policy expert and member of the Executive Council of the Harvard School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times, “It would be much easier to believe the flattering China’s official statistics if they were validated by a thriving and independent media.” China has

recently pushed the narrative that there are zero, or few new cases of the virus in the country.

Haskins said that without free speech, “virtually no other free-doms are possible,” noting that in China, there is no such right.

“Free speech helps ... make it more likely that government will be held accountable for its failures and abuses,” Haskins said.

Free WorldMichael Barone, a political analyst and emeritus fellow at American Enterprise Institute, a Washing-ton-based think tank, said coun-tries such as Taiwan and South Korea quickly enacted strict but not draconian measures to stop the spread of the CCP virus “with a transparency that’s a vivid con-trast with the concealment and lies that are standard practice in the People’s Republic of China.”

“I think there is a shocking contrast between the behavior and performance of Communist-ruled China and those of its neigh-bors with a similar ethnic and/or cultural heritage—Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore,” Barone told The Epoch Times.

Barone expanded on that argu-ment in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, writing, “It’s clear that regime character makes an enormous difference.”

“Taiwan, South Korea, Singa-pore, and Hong Kong have shown how people raised in Chinese or Chinese-influenced cultures of social cohesion and observation of rules can perform well in a situ-ation of unanticipated stress,” he wrote, adding how the countries

It’s very likely thousands of people have died who otherwise would not have. Justin Haskins, editorial director, The Heartland Institute

The Chinese Communist Party completely controls all production and exploits every opportunity to steal intellectual property and innovation. Casey Fleming, chairman and CEO, BlackOps Partners

A teacher uses Zoom to work from her home in Arlington, Va., on April 1, 2020.

OLIVIer DOuLIery/aFP VIa Getty ImaGes

CCP VIRUS

Tyranny Versus Free World: Responses to Pandemic Expose Dark Side of Communism

effectively screened passengers from China, distributed record numbers of protective masks, and introduced intensive testing.

President Donald Trump acted relatively quickly to the CCP virus as well, on Jan. 31 barring entry to the United States from foreign nationals who had been in main-land China.

The United States’ measures to slow the spread of the CCP virus are much more humane than Chi-na’s. U.S. residents in some of the harder-hit areas of the country are being told to stay home if possible, and everyone is recommended to maintain safe social distances.

Meanwhile, federal assistance from the government was enact-ed quickly, with Trump recently signing a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill meant to fuel the fight against the pandemic and sustain the econo-my. The package was the largest stimulus package in the nation’s modern history.

The United States also never employed draconian measures or thuggish tactics against its own citizens.

Deffarges said the countries who have been responding to the virus well have shown close cooperation and harmony of communication between federal and local govern-ments, something he criticized the United States for not following.

But he noted that free societies “will eventually prove better than authoritarian regimes at handling this pandemic crisis, provided they enjoy both good governments and public trust.”

Over the next 12–18 months, so-lutions to beat the pandemic will likely come from the United States’ “unique combination of leading academic medical centers and na-tional institutes of health and pri-vate enterprises, large and small,” Deffarges said.

“In the U.S., Franklin Delano Roosevelt enjoyed immense trust at the outset of World War II, and used this trust to mobilize the whole of U.S. industry in the war effort,” he said.

Cathy He and Eva Fu contrib-uted to this report.

V

Members of the Chinese People’s Armed Police wearing protective masks march through Tiananmen Square during a national mourning in Beijing on April 4, 2020.

LIntaO ZhanG/Getty ImaGes

screenshOt

Li Zehua, 25, a video blogger arrested for telling the truth about the outbreak in Wuhan, China, during a live stream on Feb. 26, 2020.

People deliver food to residents over a barrier set up to prevent people from entering or leaving a residential community in Wuhan, China, on March 16, 2020.

str/aFP VIa Getty ImaGes

Week 16, 2020 Week 16, 20204 | CHINA INSIDER CHINA INSIDER | 5

nicole Hao

Authorities in Wuhan have con-sistently underreported CCP virus infections and the resulting death toll, based on internal government documents from one of the city’s districts received by The Epoch Times.

The central Chinese city is where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, first emerged.

Statistical modeling by experts, as well as eyewitness accounts from locals and data previously provided The Epoch Times, have shown that Chinese authorities concealed the true scale of the out-break in Wuhan and other parts of China.

The latest documents reveal how the deception begins at low levels of government.

Real Numbers?Among the 13 districts in Wuhan, the Huangpi district is a residential area, where the outbreak is likely to be less severe than denser parts of the city.

But in 20 classified documents from the Huangpi district health bureau, data reveals that the dis-trict had many patients that were hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms—making the public-ly reported data by the Wuhan Health Commission likely false.

Each day, district health bureaus fill out a form issued by the Wuhan Health Commission, to report to-tal CCP virus cases within their

jurisdiction; those numbers aren’t disclosed to the public.

The Epoch Times has obtained copies of those forms for dates in January and February. They con-tain detailed information about patients who visited the 22 hos-pitals located in Huangpi district, including a contact person and phone numbers.

On Jan. 12, the Wuhan govern-ment didn’t officially report any new infections or suspected cases. At the time, China hadn’t yet de-veloped a diagnostic test kit for de-tecting the virus, so authorities’ criteria for confirming infections weren’t transparent.

The statistic form, however, showed that 202 patients visited hospitals in Huangpi district on Jan. 12 after developing a fever—one of the symptoms of COVID-19.

Later in the month, the Wuhan government appeared to change its tallying method. On the bot-tom of the form for Jan. 29 was a new note for district governments: “The daily tally of new infections will only count patients who were treated at the 26 hospitals desig-nated for COVID-19-only [patients] in Wuhan.”

Since there are only two such designated COVID-19 hospitals in Huangpi district, the completed forms for Huangpi henceforth only listed the two hospitals’ data. That means COVID-19 patients who checked into the district’s other hospitals were no longer counted.

For Jan. 29, the Wuhan Health Commission officially reported 356 new infections in the city. But

according to internal data, Huang-pi district alone reported 150 cases that day—all patients hospitalized at the Huangpi District Chinese Medicine Hospital.

In downtown Wuhan, other CO-VID-19 hospitals such as Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital, Red Cross Hospital, Wuhan Union Hospi-tal, Wuhan Tongji Hospital, and Wuchang Hospital, would likely have received more patients than the Huangpi facility.

Another document, dated March 14, showed detailed information for all confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in the district until that date.

The Epoch Times obtained a section of that report, showing 31 names with their ID numbers and home addresses. Among them was 33-year-old Xu Gang, who died at the Chinese Medicine Hospital on Feb. 19, and 90-year-old Peng Xi-

hui, who died at the Mulan Hospi-tal, with no specified date of death.

The location of death for 22 of the patients was at designated hospi-tals in Huangpi district and the broader Wuhan region. Eight of them didn’t list a location—mean-ing they likely died at a non-desig-nated hospital or at home.

That suggests there may be more undocumented patients who may have died of COVID-19, but weren’t tallied because they weren’t checked into a designated hospital.

Medical StaffThe Huangpi district bureau also kept records of medical staff who were showing symptoms of CO-VID-19, from Feb. 4 to Feb. 9. For example, the district bureau noted that three staffers showed symp-toms on Feb. 4. That day, according to the internal data, the district re-corded a total of 16 new infections.

The records didn’t say clearly whether the people were diag-nosed with COVID-19; by that time, authorities had already de-veloped testing kits.

But if they were, that indicated medical personnel accounted for almost 19 percent of the total infec-tions that day.

On Feb. 7, five medical staff had symptoms, making up almost 24 percent of the total diagnoses that day.

Medical workers are among the most vulnerable to infection.

The family member of an indi-vidual living at the campus of the Hubei General Hospital—a resi-dential compound for the facil-ity’s roughly 1,500 medical staff and their relatives—previously told the Chinese language Epoch Times that more than 500 people living there have been diagnosed with the virus.

A form filled out by officials in Wuhan’s Huangpi district, showing infection data for two COVID-19-only hospitals in the district. A reminder at the bottom (underlined in red) states that districts should only report infections at COVID-19 designated facilities.

PrOVIDeD tO the ePO

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CCP VIRUS

COVERUP

As China Begins to Lift Restrictions, Fears Mount of 2nd Wave Virus OutbreakcatHy He & nicole Hao

Fears of a sec-ond wave CCP virus infec-tions in China are mounting as several areas recently re-implemented

lockdowns in response to local-ized clusters.

Since April, a county in central China’s Henan Prov-ince, cities in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang, and parts of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have been placed under lockdown—weeks after restrictions were lifted across much of the country.

Meanwhile, rising numbers of asymptomatic carriers—those infected who do not show symptoms of the COVID-19 dis-ease—have fueled concerns of a second wave of infections.

“They will get a second wave, most likely,” Dr. Aimee Ferraro, infectious diseases researcher and senior core faculty member for Walden University’s Master of Public Health program, told The Epoch Times. “And it will be from asymptomatic cases or imported cases from outside.”

Ferraro said that a second wave could see an exponential growth in infections, just like during the initial outbreak.

‘Silent Carriers’Chinese authorities only started reporting asymptomatic cases on April 1—prior to this, these patients were not recorded. At the time, the National Health Commission said there were 1,541 asymptomatic cases under medical observation. Since then, hundreds of new asymptomatic cases have been reported.

While the country’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou has said such cases accounted for 4.4 percent of total confirmed

patients, classified Chinese gov-ernment data showed that as-ymptomatic carriers could form up to one-third of those who test positive, the South China Morn-ing Post reported.

The data showed that more than 43,000 patients who tested positive in China by the end of February were asymptomatic. These patients were placed in quarantine and monitored, the outlet reported.

Ferraro said that the lack of widespread testing in China, which would have detected more cases of asymptom-atic carriers, meant there was likely “a ghost system of disease spread” in the community.

“They’re [Chinese authori-ties] either aware of it and not telling others because of the political implications, or they just don’t have the resources to do it [widespread testing],” she said.

New Lockdowns, Makeshift HospitalsFor weeks, the Chinese regime has reported few new domes-tic infections, claiming that the bulk of new cases are from returnees who were infected overseas.

But interviews with Chinese citizens and internal reports ob-tained by The Epoch Times have revealed that local authorities frequently underreport cases.

For instance, a dataset from Wuhan health authorities showed that the city tested 16,000 patient samples on March 14, with 373 showing up positive. But authorities only publicly recorded four infec-tions for that day.

In China’s northernmost province of Heilongjiang, au-thorities locked down the city of Suifenhe, which borders Russia, on April 7, which officials said was part of an attempt to stem the spread of imported cases from Russia.

From March 27 to April 9, the city recorded more than 100 imported cases, as well as 148 asymptomatic patients that were imported cases. Only three new domestic infections were reported during that period.

However, data from the pro-vincial health commission cast doubt on the low numbers of domestic infections.

The commission on April 9 announced that 1,051 people in the province went to hospitals presenting symptoms of fever on the previous day. But on April 8, the province reported only 40 new infections, which were all imported cases. It also said 878 people were admitted to hospitals due to fever on April 7, but on that day only 25 new infections were recorded, all of whom were imported cases.

Meanwhile, a makeshift hos-pital was built in Suifenhe on April 11, with 600-bed capacity.

The provincial health commis-sion is also preparing to make available nearly 4,000 beds elsewhere in the province, ac-cording to an internal document seen by The Epoch Times.

Suifenhe and Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, will now require all arrivals from abroad to undergo 28 days of quaran-tine, as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests.

Harbin added that it would lock down any residential units where confirmed and asymp-tomatic virus cases are found for 14 days.

In Jiamusi, another city in Heilongjiang, residents recently told the Chinese-language edi-tion of The Epoch Times that many residential compounds in Xiangyang district of the city were placed under lockdown again on April 2, after measures were lifted on March 12. Al-though local authorities did not provide a reason for the change in policy, residents believed it was due to new infections.

In the nearby region of Inner Mongolia, the city of Man-zhouli, located along the border with Russia, said authorities were preparing a new hospital to treat virus patients, with construction to be completed on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the southern city of Guangzhou, home to a large immigrant community from countries in Africa, has seen an uptick of new infections among African nationals in recent weeks.

Authorities in Guangzhou city have ordered bars and restau-rants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in Guang-zhou said in a statement on April 12.

Moreover, anyone with “Afri-can contacts” faces mandatory virus tests followed by quaran-tine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation.

The U.S. consulate recom-mended that “African-Ameri-cans or those who believe Chi-nese officials may suspect them of having contact with nation-als of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice.”

Many Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and left with nowhere to stay, videos shared on social media revealed.

Mr. Zhou, a resident from Yaotai village, Yuexiu district in Guangzhou, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on April 7: “Our village has been locked down again since two days ago. All stores except supermarkets were closed. We need to pass a body temperature screen-ing when we leave or enter our village… Police who patrol on the streets arrest African people when they see them.”

Zhou said the village was placed under lockdown in late January. The quarantine mea-sures were lifted in early March.

They will get a second wave, most likely. And it will be from asymptomatic cases or imported cases from outside.Dr. Aimee Ferraro, infectious diseases researcher and senior core faculty member for Walden University’s Master of Public Health program

Commuters wear protective masks as they exit a subway station during Monday rush hour in Beijing on April 13, 2020.

LIntaO ZhanG/Getty ImaGes

Leaked Documents From District Authorities in Wuhan Reveal Scale of Virus Data Coverup

eva Fu

A province in northern China is preparing thousands of hospital beds in anticipation of a surge in CCP virus patients—days af-ter lockdown measures were relaxed in the epicenter city of Wuhan, according to internal documents viewed by The Epoch Times.

Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province, locked down its border city of Suifenhe on April 7, in what officials said was an attempt to stem the flow of imported cases from Russia.

From March 27 to April 9, the city re-ported more than 100 imported cases, as well as 148 asymptomatic patients—those infected who don’t show any symptoms of the disease COVID-19—that were im-ported cases. Only three new domestic in-fections were reported during that period.

Residents in Heilongjiang, however, have expressed doubt about the official figures, saying authorities were likely aiming to downplay the severity of the new wave of infections by focusing on imported cases.

Suifenhe is building a 600-bed make-shift hospital dedicated to asymptomatic patients, while its 70,000 residents are now under lockdown. Only one person from each household can venture out for necessities once every three days.

A neighborhood officer, in a message on Chinese super-app WeChat seen by The Epoch Times, emphasized to residents of a complex in Suifenhe the gravity of the situation.

“Does everyone know how serious this is?” The officer said. “You have no idea who’s got it and who has not … having no symptoms is even scarier,” referring to asymptomatic infections.

Meanwhile, an internal notice from Heilongjiang’s health commission, dated April 8, shows that provincial officials are planning to make available nearly 4,000 hospital beds elsewhere.

The notice, which indicates the author-

ity is planning to set up a 1,100-member medical support team, also instructed local authorities to provide a candidate list within 24 hours.

Asymptomatic CarriersUp to 25 percent of all infected indi-viduals are transmitting the virus while never showing any symptoms, according to Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion. Some others are also able to spread the virus 48 hours before they start to feel unwell.

Even some patients thought to have recovered from the disease appear to be testing positive again. On April 10, South Korea reported 91 cases of patients who contracted the disease again after having previously recovered. Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the country’s top health agen-cy, said the virus may have been “reacti-vated” in those patients.

China didn’t include asymptomatic patients in its daily tally of confirmed cases until April 1, when it announced 1,541 such patients to be under medical observation.

The National Health Commission in February acknowledged in its official guidelines that asymptomatic carriers to be a “potential source of infection,” and since then, multiple Chinese health ex-perts have played down the risk of spread from asymptomatic patients.

Chinese respiratory expert Yang Jiong,

in an interview with state media in early April, said that there may be 10,000 to 20,000 asymptomatic carriers in Wuhan. That interview has since been deleted.

Official Data QuestionedWhile the Chinese regime has reported few new domestic infections in recent weeks, claiming most new cases are among travelers who were infected over-seas, some Heilongjiang residents ques-tion whether the regime is providing the full picture.

Yu, who lives in the provincial capital Harbin, wonders if officials are simply la-beling all cases as imported to downplay the situation.

“If they acknowledged local cases, it would mean that the outbreak is not under control, and ‘imported cases’ would be a convenient excuse,” he told The Epoch Times. “Local officials have been covering it up, they don’t report the true [numbers].”

Another Harbin native, Deng, said her

neighborhood is currently under lock-down measures, which includes a cur-few at 10 p.m. She said that at least two residents in her area, while entering the security gate, received a yellow and red flag on their mobile virus detection app, respectively, meaning they are potential virus carriers and would be quarantined.

Deng said she didn’t dare to ask too much, since she didn’t want to be accused of “not believing in the government.”

“The information is not transparent,” she said.

Hotels in Suifenhe have shut their doors over infection fears following the new lockdown, according to a local resident, who said his surname is Li. Some Chinese who recently came back from Moscow have been quarantined in local sports arenas, Li said.

“Coming back is actually even more un-safe,” Li said. “You might not have the virus, but it’s very easy to get infected in a concentrated group. You don’t know who may acquire the virus.”

EXCLUSIVE

Does everyone know how serious this is? You have no idea who’s got it and who has not

… having no symptoms is even scarier. Neighborhood officer

Province in China Prepares Thousands of Hospital Beds Amid New Wave of Infections

A medical worker assists a man seeking treatment at the Huanggang Zhongxin Hospital in Huanggang, Hubei Province, China, on March 27, 2020.

nOeL ceLIs/aFP VIa Getty ImaGes

Week 16, 2020 Week 16, 20206 | CHINA INSIDER CHINA INSIDER | 7

Demand continues to slump even as 91 percent of franchised new-car dealerships have reportedly reopened

James Gorrie

Contrary to the ridiculous propa-ganda flowing out of Beijing, China’s

claim of being the new leader of the

world rings hollow. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) self-congratulatory mes-sages about how it has “success-fully” led China through the pandemic that it, in fact, released upon the world, is hardly a man-date for global leadership.

In fact, given the volume of trade and supply chains fleeing China, the real story is just how brittle and fragile China’s economy truly is without the American market to support it.

But until Donald Trump took office, that wasn’t a commonly un-derstood fact.

China’s ‘Inevitable Rise’For many policymakers and observ-ers, the inevitability of China’s rise to replace the United States as the leader of the world seemed a fore-gone conclusion. It was also viewed as a positive eventuality by none other than one of the first architects of America’s China policy, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kiss-inger, who said in 2007:

“When friends and colleagues in the United States talk about the rise of China and the problems it pres-ents to us, I say the rise is inevitable. There is nothing we can do to pre-vent it, there is nothing we should do to prevent it.”

It was just such a fatalist and self-defeating (or was it simply globalist?) thinking that initiated the decline of American power in the postwar world. Kissinger’s disastrous policy in Vietnam of “graduated response” led to the United States’ humiliating defeat and the expansion of communist regimes and wars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for the next decade or so.

Fast forward to 2007, Kissinger

tells the United States and its allies that we must accept the fact of a world led by China. Ten years later, in 2017, when Trump took office, there was no question that China had become a formidable adversary of the United States throughout much of the world.

How the West Built ChinaHowever, it was clear to Trump that China had been allowed to become a global challenger. Its rise was a result of the West providing con-tinuous and large-scale investment and technology to it for two decades. In other words, the United States did for China what China couldn’t do for itself in the prior three decades of CCP rule.

What’s more, China is a rather belligerent beneficiary. From 2000 to 2016, during its rise to global dominance, Beijing demonstrated a total disregard for the established, i.e. American, rules governing inter-national trade and finance.

Of course, prior U.S. administra-tions knew of China’s cheating, but mostly regarded it as just the “cost of doing business.” The promised—but elusive—access to its billion-plus domestic market and cheap labor proved too enticing to pass up.

In the meantime, China continued to take greater market share from the United States and other Western trading partners. That also included forced technology transfers, ram-pant intellectual property theft, massive foreign direct investments, and unrestricted access to U.S. capi-tal markets.

Preserving the Postwar Order?Nary a whimper of protest was heard from either political party. That is, until Donald Trump became president.

Unlike the globalists in both Democrat and Republican parties—and they are many—Trump saw the fragility of China’s economy well before the rest of the world. He also understood that China’s reliance on slave labor and adversarial trade policies were some of the main rea-

sons why U.S. manufacturers found it almost impossible to compete with China.

Finally, Trump understood that single-sourcing of critical supplies from an adversary is unwise, to put it politely. And that if nothing changed, China’s rise as the world leader at the expense of the United States would indeed be inevitable.

Ultimately, Trump saw China for the threat that it truly is to the U.S.-led postwar world order.

But his warnings about the dangers and risks of relying on China went largely misunderstood. Instead, critics blamed Trump with destroying the postwar world order.

That charge, of course, begs one very simple question:

How is preventing the rise of a totalitarian state—one that violates rules governing international trade, seeks to destroy the economies of the West, and remake the world in its totalitarian image—a threat to the American-led, democratic, capitalist world order?

It isn’t, of course. Trump is trying to preserve the postwar world order as much as possible. That includes a much more diversified global economy, where supply chains are not concentrated in one nation, and an adversarial one at that.

It was no secret, either, that the United States’ dependence on China came at the expense of U.S. jobs and the country’s manufacturing base. Still, Trump’s characterization of China as a mortal economic threat to the very trading partners that did so much to bring modernity to it was viewed with dismay and derision.

Globalism, after all, was what the world needed to move forward, right?

US Breaking China’s GripNot so much anymore.

The most wicked and devastating pandemic to plague the earth in more than a century tells the real story about the CCP. Despite Bei-jing’s despicable propaganda, the world now knows of the CCP lead-

ership’s responsibility for infecting the entire world with its deadly CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. It’s clear that Beijing waited two months to acknowledge the outbreak as it continued to spread throughout the rest of the world.

The community of nations finally sees the true nature of the CCP and the contempt it has for human life.

U.S. politicians see it, too, and are beginning to act. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has proposed legislation to bring back supply chains from China that are critical to Ameri-cans’ well-being. The proposal includes medical supply chains for key medical equipment and sup-plies, and low-cost federal loans to expedite that process within this calendar year.

As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated after a recent G-7 meeting, “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated.

“The CCP also threatens to un-dermine the free and open order that has underpinned our mutual prosperity and safety in the G-7 countries.”

And, as Shadi Hamid, a senior fel-low at the Brookings Institute, wrote for The Atlantic, “[The] relationship with China cannot and should not go back to normal.”

From day one of his presidency, Trump’s goal was to break the disas-trous trade relationship between the United States and China. His trade war revealed the brittle weakness of China as an economic power. But the CCP’s viral pandemic has re-vealed the Party leadership’s moral bankruptcy to the world.

James Gorrie is a writer and speaker based in Southern California. He is the author of “The China Crisis.”

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Trump understood that single-sourcing of critical supplies from an adversary is unwise, to put it politely. And that if nothing changed, China’s rise as the world leader at the expense of the United States would indeed be inevitable.

OPINION

President Trump’s trade war and the CCP virus reveal the deep fractures in China’s economy

The Pandemic Vindicates Trump’s China Policy

President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017.

nIcOLas asFOurI/aFP/Getty ImaGes

Workers at the Dongfeng Fengshen car plant eat their lunch while sitting six feet apart, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on March 24, 2020.

Getty ImaGes

ECONOMY

China’s Auto Market Crashes in First Quarter Amid PandemicFan yu

utomobile sales in China were completely blitzed during the

first quarter of 2020.Sales numbers from Jan-

uary to March were the worst ever, as the CCP virus pandemic shut car factories and dealerships across Chi-na, and consumers held tight to their pocketbooks.

China auto sales fell an annualized 43 percent in March, official data released by the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed on April 10. The world’s largest auto market has struggled to get back on track follow-ing an extended drop in demand—made worse by the ongoing pandemic of the CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

Results in March were slightly better than February, when sales cratered 79 percent as most of the country was under lockdown. However, March data was still unsatisfactory, given that Beijing had looked to open the economy as quickly as possible.

China’s auto sector is currently mired in a deep slump that preceded the CCP virus-induced shutdown, as March marked the 21st consecutive month of nationwide sales declines.

Horrid TimingThe Chinese market isn’t only vital for local domestic automakers, but foreign brands such as General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG in recent years have pinned their growth prospects on China.

The timing of the pandemic is par-ticularly damaging for the Chinese auto market, which came into 2020 with big expectations following two years of declining sales due to lower demand and overproduction.

Beijing was hoping for a speedy V-shaped rebound, but on the ground, economic activity was reviving at a much slower pace than the govern-ment had anticipated. A V-shaped recovery is no longer in the cards. At best, Chinese economic recovery will be U-shaped, with the most likely sce-nario being an L-shaped recovery fol-lowing a prolonged recession triggered

by foreign demand shock.Nearly 91 percent of franchised

new-car dealerships in China have reopened as of mid-March, accord-ing to industry publication Auto News. But showroom traffic still lags; dealers are only seeing 53 percent of normal customer levels.

Other data suggest that store foot traffic has been decreasing since then. The March increase in visits to dealer-ships tailed off in April, IHS Markit analyst Lin Huaibin told the Wall Street Journal. The country’s linger-ing employment crisis could be a main factor. China’s official unemployment rate issued by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) jumped to an all-time-high of 6.2 percent in January and February combined, from 5.2 percent in December 2019—equating to roughly 5 million new people out of work.

Those figures are certainly under-stating the true jobless figures. Off the bat, migrant workers are not included. But it’s useful in this instance as the official NBS unemployment figures do count workers in China’s urban cen-ters. And it’s likely that most of those 5 million unemployed people previously

had economic means to purchase cars.Local automakers also appear to be

disproportionately affected by the CCP virus.

Domestic automakers Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Great Wall Mo-tor, and the Warren Buffett-backed BYD saw sales decreases of 43 percent, 47 percent, and 48 percent, respec-tively. As a group, they experienced the biggest sales drops, according to the WSJ report. Local car brands’ cus-tomers are generally less affluent and could be more susceptible to economic downturns.

Loosening RestrictionsThree months into 2020, it already looks to be a lost cause for the Chinese auto industry.

To combat sagging demand, Beijing

is implementing measures to stimu-late the economy and revive consumer spending.

At a macro level, China’s total so-cial financing (TSF) rose to a record 5.2 trillion yuan ($730 billion) in March. TSF is the broadest measure of China’s total financing and includes both on-balance sheet (via commercial lenders) and off-balance-sheet financing (via shadow banks and trusts). This means that companies are being granted un-precedented liquidity funding to sur-vive the current downturn.

A slew of industry-specific actions also took place. Beijing announced in March that it would extend elec-tric vehicle (EV) purchase subsidies through 2022, which were supposed to end this year.

China is pushing to become a global leader in EV adoption. But EV sales during the January to March period dropped by 56 percent, according to the WSJ. And China’s EV industry is notoriously fragmented, with dozens of startups vying for attention. WM Motor, NIO, and Xpeng Motors are the three most prominent EV mak-ers with major Chinese backing from Tencent, Alibaba Group Holding, and Baidu, respectively. But dozens of EV automakers had limited funding even before the pandemic hit.

Local authorities have also begun to offer consumer subsidies. Cities such as Changsha, Guangzhou, and Ningbo are offering incentives to po-tential buyers.

Changsha, for example, announced last month that it would offer rebates up to 3,000 yuan ($429) to buyers of new cars built locally from March 11 to June 30.

Taking a page from U.S. President Donald Trump’s playbook, Beijing pol-icymakers are also considering delay-ing implementation of more stringent emissions rules by six months, to help the auto industry weather the storm.

The Trump administration recently rolled back vehicle emissions stan-dards adopted under the Obama ad-ministration—requiring 1.5 percent annual increases in fuel efficiency, much more lenient than the 5 percent previously mandated.

Cities such as Changsha, Guangzhou, and Ningbo are offering incentives to potential buyers.

GreG BaKer/aFP VIa Getty ImaGes

A sales representative waits for customers in a luxury car showroom in Beijing on Jan. 22, 2019.

A

Week 16, 20208 | CHINA INSIDER

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