Brilliant Analysis

Nobody believes China's pandemic numbers are remotely accurate: they are clearly lying. As part of its coverage of the Olympics -- which we should be refusing to participate in, both because of the ongoing genocide and slave labor in China and also because we cannot protect our citizens who travel there, as even Nancy Pelosi admits -- the NYT decided to entertain those numbers.

Headline: "Good morning. China’s zero-Covid policy has kept deaths very low. Can it continue?"

Has it, though? Refer to the graph at the first link.

The NYT admits that there is widespread disbelief: "Even if China’s official numbers are artificially low, its true Covid death toll is almost certainly much lower than that of the U.S., Europe or many other countries. Consider how enormous the official gap is."

That is an astonishing bit of reasoning. "Even if they're lying, look how BIG the lie would have to be. They can't be lying THAT much."

I mean, they could be. Their lies over the Great Leap Forward leave us guessing, even today, as to whether only 30 million people died or as many as 60 million people did. They control the state media and have threatened the foreign media on the ground very effectively, while purchasing influence with their parent companies. There's no reason to believe their numbers are remotely accurate, especially since they are also implausible. They're claiming to be doing fifty times as well as Japan, for example, a nation of similar population density and social cohesion but higher technology and far better sanitation. 

UPDATE: The PRC apparently chose to open the games with a synchronized display of smiling and waving Uyghurs, whose families are under threat at home to ensure their cooperation. It is raw, totalitarian propaganda. 

4 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The initial estimates for the Great Leap Forward were about a million deaths - and people didn't even want to talk about that. How much they would have to be lying is indeed a good metric. But then asking "How much have they lied in the past?" is a good estimate going forward.

Texan99 said...

Interesting that they even care that much about how the world sees the Uyghur problem.

douglas said...

Have to admit I was surprised they went with the soft emotional appeal route with the whole opening, and denial on the Uyghurs. A more sophisticated approach that shows they understand the soft underbelly of the West better than I thought they did- just appeal to the liberal whites that are driving us into the ground- they'll happily buy the rationalizations and the CCP will keep destroying their enemies from the inside.

Anonymous said...

If you take Dikötter's work as accurate, the CCP now accepts 40 million as the death-toll of the Great Leap Forward. However, that was pre-Xi, so they might have gone back to the original official number.

LittleRed1