The British government will no longer recognise the number of coronavirus deaths reported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over fears that the country is producing fake data during the pandemic.
The figures from the communist regime were included in Downing Street’s “global death comparison” until last week as questions began to mount over the accuracy of the strikingly low numbers of deaths in the country from which the virus was spawned.
“This data is used to judge the effectiveness of our own response, whether good or bad. It’s important we are comparing like with like, otherwise our own responses could be distorted leading to more deaths in the UK. Clearly No 10 believes the same as the rest of the world — that China’s data is unreliable and possibly false,” the Conservative Party chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat said according to the Evening Standard.
The Chinese government recently revised the official number of coronavirus deaths in Wuhan by 50 per cent, however, there are indications that this number is still much higher in reality. Last week, experts at Hong Kong University published a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, that suggested that some 232,000 people in China have been infected with the Wuhan virus, four times as many as has been officially reported by the regime in Beijing.
President Donald Trump has also criticised the official death toll reported by China, saying: “We don’t have the most in the world deaths, the most in the world has to be China, it’s a massive country, it’s gone through a tremendous problem with this. They must have the most.”
The CCP has not only been accused of producing fake numbers during the pandemic but has also been charged with spreading disinformation and even destroying early samples of the Chinese coronavirus, thereby preventing countries like the US and the UK from developing a proper response to the virus.
“It didn’t report sustained human-to-human transmission for a month until it was in every province inside of China. It censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples,” said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The CCP still has not shared the virus sample from inside of China with the outside world, making it impossible to track the disease’s evolution,” Pompeo added.
The global disinformation campaign carried out by the Chinese state, in which state-owned propaganda outlets suggested that the Wuhan virus was created by the American military, has reportedly sparked fury within the upper ranks of Boris Johnson’s government, leading to calls for a re-evaluation of the relationship between the two nations after the pandemic.
A group of Tory MPs have formed the China Research Group that will study the global role and ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party. One of the main issues the group will study will be Boris Johnson’s decision to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei access to Britain’s 5G infrastructure, which the United States and Australia have warned could give the communist regime back door access into the networks of Britain and her allies.
The secretary of the China Research Group, Neil O’Brien said: “Beijing is acting in a strategic way to dominate the industries of the future. Our businesses are being asked to compete unfairly with state-backed Chinese firms. Even before coronavirus, it was clear that we need new thinking to cope with a Chinese state which is growing in power, but no longer seems to be on a road to reform.”
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.