[johan_larson]

I don't for a minute believe this number is actually true. But on the other hand, it seems like a very strange lie to tell, because it's so unbelievable. It would be far easier to believe a claim that COVID deaths are simply very rare but not actually non-existent. That would be the sensible lie, the canny lie.

It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all. But if they really don't care, why lie in the first place?

The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that a) the government of China is reluctant to admit to any fault at all, b) the actual number of deaths is low but not impressively low, and c) the Chinese press (including social media) is very tightly controlled, and d) by b and c the government can get away with saying there are no deaths without looking like idiots.

[pdpi]

It's a power move.

A lie you want me to believe is an admission of weakness. You're effectively saying you're ashamed of telling me the truth. Claiming zero deaths is a lie you don't want me to believe. You want me to know you're lying. It's half "none of your fucking business", half "what are you going to do about it?"

[techdragon]

It doesn't start this way... but it becomes this way once the reality of a dysfunctional chain of reporting begins to send you progressively less less believable reports. Past a certain point... you have no choice, your left with "play it as a power move" and "admit failure". Thats the most likely chain of events.

[davidjytang]

One of my relatives went to school for couple of years in China roughly ten years ago near Beijing.

One of the banner hung in school yard translated to English:

"The Communist Party is a party that never make mistakes."

[yread]

I don't think it's an actual lie, maybe more incompentence.

Western governments don't try to lie about it (I hope) and they still underestimate the real numbers by ~50%. China shockingly doesn't publish (perhaps they don't even have that data) excess deaths for the whole country and they never did.

So it's impossible to try and figure it out from there. They are doing some serious mental gymnastics ( https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/01/china/china-birthrate-202... ) about changes in birth rate to explain change in total population though. So, perhaps there are more excess deaths there as well

[albertopv]

Considering that URSS named whole space missions only when they succeded, and they failed quite often, it's quite believable that China could lie on this number, a task that requires only to "hide" people and Chinese Communist Party is quite good at that.

[vidanay]

USSR?

edit: After 50 years, TIL that URRS and USSR are synonyms.

[rwmj]

I think it's the Russian tactic of trying to coarsen debate with the aim of people not knowing what to believe so they tune out of politics ("all politicians lie").

[DiogenesKynikos]

Somehow this hasn't really sunk in in the West, but China basically ended its pandemic by April 2020.

There has been no sustained local transmission within China since then. There are small clusters of cases that occur when the virus somehow breaches the border protections (e.g., 3-week quarantine for all incoming passengers). There's a very quick reaction whenever this happens, and the outbreak is ended within days to weeks.

The Xi'an outbreak, with 2,000 cases in total, is the most serious outbreak China has had since April 2020. There are small cities in the US with more cases than that every day. Exponential growth is brutal, so China can remain at ultra-low numbers, as long as it detects and contains outbreaks early.

That's why there have been only a handful of deaths (contrary to the title of this thread, there have been a few reported deaths) since April 2020.

There are plenty of people here on Hacker News who either live in China or have friends/family there. It just seems to be the people who don't have any contact with the country who have a hard time believing what's going on in China. I sort of understand: China's pandemic experience has been so different from that of the West that it can be difficult to accept as reality.

[pxue]

the way Chinese government works is that thousands of local municipal level governments implements and then reports into the central government (politburo).

this basically becomes a huge prisoner's dilemma, no body in charge wants to look bad.

[tmaly]

What if it were true? What if the numbers prior to April 2020 were miscounted? What if "died of Covid" took on a more strict definition?

[birdinforest]

Let's say I get a math text book published in China. In the first page it prints 1+1=2. I don't for a minute believe this equation is actually true. But on the other hand, it seems like a very strange lie to tell, because it's so unbelievable. There are too many digits to select, why do they choose 2? It would be far easier to believe a claim that 1+1=11.

It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all.

The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that they just choosed the mose closed digit after 1 without looking like idiots.

Guess what? If you find a state which is too unbelievalbe to be a lie, it has a very big chance that it is not a lie, unless you really get a evidence to against it.

I am sorry be emotinal if you are really seriously to anaylis. However just because you are probably seriouse, I really want to points out you are in the wrong way. When you are driving in highway and find a sign sys 'WRONG WAY GO BACK'. You should go back, but not turn left, breaking roadbed and drive to the wild field.

[Jansen312]

Around Feb 2020 at the peak of then Wuhan, there was an accidental reporting on one of the news channel there showing 200K death. Even subsequent body bags order urgently from Taiwan seems to account for that huge numbers. And many reported for days the sky has strong ash smell, with all crematorium working non-stop for months. It is possible the numbers are in millions as there is also reported telco subscribers lost a lot of subscribers there in the range of millions. Considering health care in China sucks if you're in rural and about 40% still in rural, plus babies died because refused admission to hospitals for hours, many believes death number are way higher than those in USA and EU. Even today, China own education system don't mention much death of "great leap forward" which actually put Mao way ahead of Hitler in death counts.