Based on an essay by Kaori Fukushima, this article examines the suppression of citizen journalists such as Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin, suspicions surrounding the number of bodies handled by Wuhan crematoriums, and the persecution of people from Wuhan and Hubei across China.
It argues that the Chinese authorities’ concealment of information, suppression of speech, and control of reporting over the new pneumonia fueled suspicion, discrimination, and panic throughout Chinese society.

March 12, 2020
Will he be killed by being made to appear to have contracted pneumonia, like Liu Xiaobo?
Liu Xiaobo was the Nobel Peace Prize-winning democratic activist who was left untreated until he reached the terminal stage of liver cancer and died in prison.
The following is a continuation of the essay by Kaori Fukushima, one of Japan’s foremost China watchers, published in this month’s issue of the national must-read monthly magazine Hanada under the title “Even Hunting Down People from Wuhan and Hubei: A Cruel Story of the New Pneumonia.”
Her essay also clearly shows that those who only subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and similar newspapers and only watch television news programs such as NHK’s Watch 9 are left as information weaklings who know nothing of the truth.
Kaori Fukushima graduated from Osaka University, joined the Sankei Shimbun, studied at Fudan University, worked as a correspondent in Beijing, and is now active as a journalist.
The mystery of the number of bodies at crematoriums.
Yet even though intellectuals and ordinary Chinese public opinion have gone this far in accusing China of the crimes of information concealment and speech control, the Chinese authorities are showing no sign of reflecting on their speech control and reporting control under the pretext of hunting down “rumors.”
On February 12, when the sorrow over Li Wenliang’s death had not yet cooled, information spread that Chen Qiushi, a Beijing lawyer and “citizen journalist” who had been conducting his own investigative reporting to expose the true number of deaths from the new coronavirus pneumonia, had been detained by the public security authorities.
Chen Qiushi entered Wuhan on January 24, the day after Wuhan City was locked down.
As a citizen journalist, he declared that he would convey the truth about the infection situation of the new pneumonia in Wuhan City while broadcasting videos and giving live reports.
He reported on hospitals and crematoriums and focused on the unnaturalness of the death toll.
This was because the number of deaths in Wuhan announced by the health authorities differed considerably from the number of bodies being received by crematoriums.
Since before the Lunar New Year, the crematoriums had been operating at full capacity, cremating four to five times the usual number of bodies.
A person connected with a crematorium told the online media Epoch Times in a telephone interview that 60 percent of those bodies were being transported not from hospitals, but from homes.
Taking February 3 as an example, at one crematorium, 127 bodies were cremated.
But the number of bodies whose cause of death was new pneumonia was eight, and the number of suspected pneumonia cases was forty-eight.
Deaths from suspected pneumonia were not included in the death toll announced by the health authorities.
There was suspicion that many people had died at home without receiving any diagnosis or treatment.
Chen Qiushi suddenly lost contact from February 6.
An anonymous Wuhan citizen who had been in contact with him until just before his disappearance testified to Voice of America, a U.S. government-affiliated Chinese-language media outlet, that Chen Qiushi was being held alone under house arrest in a residential area different from a hospital.
In addition, Chen Qiushi’s close friend Xu Xiaodong also revealed through YouTube that he had received an explanation from an “insider” that Chen was being kept under surveillance.
Chen Qiushi is said not to have contracted pneumonia for the time being and to be healthy.
But the public security authorities are said to have feared his reporting and detained him.
He is reportedly being confined under the pretext of a fifteen-day “administrative detention” based on the Public Security Administration Punishments Law.
After the detention period passes, it seems highly likely that he will be forcibly sent back to Beijing.
However, people who know the cruelty of China’s public security authorities are worried.
“Will he be killed by being made to appear to have contracted pneumonia, like Liu Xiaobo?”
“Will Chen Qiushi become a second Li Wenliang?”
That is what they fear.
Fang Bin, a businessman in Wuhan who had also been conducting his own reporting activities and posting the results on SNS, was reportedly taken away by plainclothes police on February 10.
Fang Bin had also focused on the large number of bodies being carried out of hospitals.
In China, since the Xi Jinping administration came to power, even stricter reporting controls have been imposed, and Chinese reporters had long stopped doing real reporting.
Citizen journalists had also hardly been active.
Only after the authorities’ concealment of information had allowed the new pneumonia infection to spread and Wuhan to be locked down did reporters within the existing media begin to conduct independent reporting.
Citizen journalists such as Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi also went into the field, fully aware of the risks of infection and arrest.
But the authorities are desperately trying to suppress such movements.
As if chasing wild beasts.
This concealment of information and control of reporting by the authorities, and this repression of those who speak the truth under the pretext of eradicating rumors, are precisely what inflame the suspicion and anxiety of the Chinese people and cause various panic symptoms.
Among them, the most cruel and miserable are the “Hubei people hunts” and “Wuhan people hunts.”
Simply because they come from Hubei or Wuhan, people are surrounded, driven away, and discriminated against.
In severe cases, there have even been reports of cases developing into murder.
Radio Free Asia reported on this cruel situation, including videos posted from the scene.
In many districts of Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, people are encouraged to inform on Wuhan people and those who have had close contact with Wuhan people, and the public security authorities offer rewards.
There was also a report that when Wuhan travelers were returning home, Shanghai passengers on the same plane demanded that they get off.
In Henan Province, which borders Hubei Province, barricades have been built on roads crossing the provincial border and guards have been posted.
They drive away Hubei people trying to enter Henan Province as if chasing away wild beasts.
Neighbors have blocked the entrances of houses where there are families who returned from Wuhan, using boards and chains from the outside, trapping them indoors so that they cannot leave.
When videos showing this were posted online, there were more voices saying that other regions should imitate Henan Province than voices of anger calling it outrageous discrimination.
In one town in Meizhou City, Guangdong Province, if one finds and informs on people from Wuhan or Hubei, the government gives thirty masks.
From January 26 to February 7, more than 140 people from Hubei were reportedly found by this method.
Rewards for informing on fever patients.
In Xiaogan City, Hubei Province, people are encouraged to inform not only on Wuhan people but also on those with fevers, with a reward of 1,000 yuan.
A discriminatory slogan is circulating in the streets:
“In heaven there is the nine-headed bird; on earth there are Hubei people.”
The nine-headed bird is an ominous monster bird like the ubume.
In one town in Sichuan Province, a tragic incident also occurred in which a person who informed on a household with a returnee from Wuhan incurred resentment and was killed by the man who had returned from Wuhan.
What is further intensifying the panic is the shortage of epidemic-prevention and medical supplies, beginning with masks.
Since January 23, dozens of medical institutions, including Wuhan Union Hospital, have issued notices one after another asking urgently for donations because of shortages of masks, disinfectant, protective clothing, surgical gowns, and other supplies.
On SNS, videos were uploaded one after another and then deleted.
They showed nurses collapsing and crying out from overwork and fear, and scenes in hospital corridors where bodies and living patients were laid together indiscriminately.
Eventually, so many videos appealing about such emergencies were uploaded that deletion could not keep up.
The deepening shortage of masks has even developed into forceful seizures between local governments.
In early February, masks that Chongqing City had purchased from overseas via Ruili were seized and requisitioned by Dali City in Yunnan Province while they were being transported by a delivery company within that city.
The State Council had already issued a notice on January 29 prohibiting the requisition of medical supplies.
But local governments, too, are changing their expressions in order to secure masks essential for epidemic-prevention work.
In addition, from February, Guangdong Province issued a notice granting Guangzhou City and Shenzhen City the right, if necessary for epidemic-prevention work, to requisition and commandeer the facilities, equipment, vehicles, supplies, and other assets of private individuals and corporations.
Already, if it is for preventing infection, rights including individual property rights are being pushed aside.
This essay continues.
It is no exaggeration to say that the NHK news programs I watch did not report any of these realities at all.
That only proves that there is not a single journalist at NHK, or that NHK is a news organization under Chinese influence.