Just scaling up our flu losses, they would lose about 100K/year. Adjust that for them having more crowded cities, sanitation and cleanliness habits that are not up to Western standards, and a healthcare system that is not as good (certainly not for 99% of them), and I would **speculate** that they have at least 250K death/year. I would also assume that they don’t think that it is a big deal in a country with 1.4 billion people - those on top may even view it with favor, getting rid of primarily older, non-productive people.
And even in the face of this, they are quarantining whole regions - which definitely speaks to their leaders’ knowledge that this is a catastrophe in the making, with the possibility of millions of dead and the shut-down of a LOT of their industry.
Some numbers for background
Since the released numbers seem to be principally concerned with Wusan, by taking the total population of China (1.43 billion) and dividing it by your flu deaths per year of 250K, I get .0004 percent and, then take that times Wusan pop of 11 million, I get about 1,500 odd flu deaths per year, divide that by 12 and get 128 deaths per month from the average flu in Wusan.
Since this virus has been going on for near 2 months (I think) that would be 256 deaths this year. So anything over that number is the 2019ncov death number for Wusan. And what of the other 63 quarantined cities?
Yeah no one calls out the army, shuts down at least 5% of their economy, uses forced removal to sealed camps for 256 dead.