The thing that worries me the most is the Chinese response to this. They could be being abundantly cautious, and after their lying and incompetence during the SARS outbreak of 2003 that makes sense, but these feels a little more than that. This feels like the CCP is much much more worried then the numbers that they have revealed support. Either they have little faith in the local provinces reporting (likely), and/or they know much much more than they are letting on. It’s just so hard to tell anything when all reporting from the ground has to be smuggled over illegal VPN’s and cut and pasted over Weibo.
My gut tells me they are scared, and I dont think the party is scared of much.
“What is the price of lies?”
They are too smart not to be scared. Of course they’re scared. Scared doesn’t mean anything.