Posted on 02/05/2021 6:07:31 PM PST by SeekAndFind
China recently issued conflicting sets of data for the number of cell phone and landline users in the country. But the data all reflect a net loss of millions of cell phone users, leading some to speculate whether the decline was due to the economic downturn, pandemic-related deaths, or something else all together.
Today, nearly every Chinese person needs a cell phone to commute into major cities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities mandate citizens to input their health information into a cellphone app, which then generates a QR code that determines a person’s risk of getting the disease and thus, whether the person can pass through security checkpoints.
The code is scanned for entering a residential compound, taking a bus or metro, visiting a grocery store, and so on.
Thus, the drop in users is unusual given that there is a greater, not lesser, need for cell phones.
“It’s hard to find a credible reason to explain why so many cellphone users dropped in China when the market had a big need for it in 2020,” said U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan in a phone interview.
“Owning a cellphone is very cheap in China…In other words, people won’t end phone service because of the cost issue in general,” Tang added.
For comparison, in 2019, the number of Chinese cellphone users went up by 35.25 million, while landline users dropped by 1.05 million, according to data from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Landline phones have become less of a necessity following the widespread use of cellphones, and thus, its use has been on a downward trend. But the drop in cellphone users is hard to explain.
Tang noted that with the Chinese regime’s underreporting of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, “even if a small percentage of the dropped users are people who died of COVID-19, the number is shocking.”
The Epoch Times previously reported that China lost 21 million cellphone users from November 2019 to February 2020. At that time, the MIIT claimed the reason was due to the bad economy.
CONFLICTING DATA
Telecommunication World is a weekly magazine that was founded and managed by MIIT.
On Jan. 23, the magazine published on its website a statistical bulletin about the Chinese telecommunications business in 2020.
According to the bulletin, “the whole country lost 16.4 million phone users in 2020, and the total number of users dropped to 1.776 billion.” In detail, cellphone users dropped by 7.28 million to 1.594 billion, while landline users dropped by 9.13 million to 182 million.”
However, these numbers are conflicted with the numbers published by mobile carriers and on the MIIT website.
China only has three mobile carriers, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. They recently published their performance reports.
The largest, China Mobile, announced that it lost 8.359 million mobile users in 2020 and had a total of 941.918 million mobile users by the end of 2020.
China Telecom announced that it gained 15.45 million mobile users in 2020 and had a total of 351.02 million users by the end of 2020.
China Unicom announced that it had lost 12.664 million mobile users in 2020, for a total of 305.811 million users.
Judging from that data, there was a net loss of 5.573 million mobile users (-8.359 + 15.45 – 12.664) in 2020.
On Jan. 22, the MIIT announced on its website the total number of phone users by the end of 2020, showing that China had 181.9 million landline users and 1.594 billion cell phone users.
MIIT did not have figures for the end of 2019, but did release data for November 2019—before the pandemic spread widely in China.
Then, comparing the November 2019 data to the December 2020 data, the number of cell phone users fell by 6.89 million, while landline users dropped by 8.92 million.
Kill the monitor tech.
No cell phone = more privacy
True, but I’d put my money on Covid deaths being way under-reported.
Not a mystery considering the source.
I and everyone I work with haven't needed our desk phones since we started remote work in March. We're using web conferencing software and our mobile phones.
There was a story way back when COVID broke in Feb/March that said the Chinese were issuing official cell phones to people and number not associated with that official phone were being shut down, or something along those lines. I'll see if I can find the original.
China probably lost millions of COVID victims, but they’ll never admit it.
RE: No cell phone = more privacy
Problem is most Chinese who live in big cities NEED these phones.
The digitization level is very high in China. People can’t survive without a cellphone, Dealing with the government for pensions and social security, buying train tickets, shopping … no matter what people want to do, they are required to use cellphones.
The CCP regime requires all Chinese to use their cellphones to generate a health code. Only with a green health code are Chinese allowed to move in China now. It’s VERY DIFFICULT for a person to cancel his cellphone.
China introduced mandatory facial scans on Dec. 1, 2019, to confirm the identity of the person who registered the phone. As early as Sept. 1, 2010, China required all cellphone users to register phones with their real identification, by which the state can control people’s speech via its large-scale monitoring system.
Furthermore, Chinese people’s bank accounts and social security accounts are bundled with their cellphone plans; apps on Chinese phones check SIM cards against the state’s database to make sure the number belongs to the user.
Beijing first launched cellphone-based health codes on March 10, 2020. All people in China must install a cellphone app and register their personal health information. Then the app can generate a QR code, which appears in three colors, to classify the user’s health level. Red means the person has an infectious disease, yellow means the person might have one, and green means the person doesn’t.
You can try to be private in China, but soon, the phone becomes a necessity.
People are avoiding the social scoring.
They are merely becoming amish.
21 Million Fewer Cellphone Users in China May Suggest a High CCP Virus Death Toll
RE: True, but I’d put my money on Covid deaths being way under-reported.
( IF YOU CAN BELIEVE THIS SITE, BUT IT QUOTES ASSOCIATED PRESS )
CLAIM: Drop in cellphone users in China is proof that the coronavirus has killed 21 million in the country, far more than the official count.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The decline in cellphone users is not linked to the number of people who died after being infected with coronavirus. Major cellphone carriers in China attributed the drop to people with multiple phone numbers canceling some service during the outbreak.
THE FACTS
Major cellphone carriers in China reported a loss of nearly 21 million subscriptions in January and February as the virus spread in the country.
More than 81,500 cases of the virus and about 3,300 deaths have been confirmed in China since the outbreak was first reported in the city of Wuhan in December, the AP has reported.
According to online data published by China’s three largest cell phone carriers, subscriptions dropped a total of 20.65 million in January and February: China Mobile Ltd. reported a drop of nearly 7.25 million subscribers in the two-month period, while China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. lost 7.8 million subscribers and China Telecom Corp. lost 5.6 million in February alone.
A number of false reports misinterpreting the data have emerged on social media, with claims that the figures are connected to the number of people who died from the virus.
“Is China hiding the real COVID-19 death toll? 21 million phones vanish,” read one headline.
Another video post about the report was falsely titled “Breaking: Wuhan super virus killed 21 million people in China according to cell phone records.”
A representative with China Mobile Ltd. said while the situation was related to the COVID-19 outbreak, it was not related to deaths, but changes in lifestyle.
“It was mainly due to reduced business and social activities resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak,” a spokesperson with the company confirmed to the AP. “Many customers in China have multiple SIM cards and it is common that they use their non-primary SIM cards to do these activities.”
A China Unicom representative acknowledged the difficult market forces at work: “For the first two months of 2020, while facing challenges such as market saturation, keen market competition and the novel coronavirus outbreak, the company upheld self-discipline on rational and orderly competition.”
China Telecom did not respond to the AP at the time of publication.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
Thanks. I did not know that)
No cell phone = more privacy
—————————————
No cell phone, no access to the outside world, just about anywhere.
Even in the US, when was the last time anyone had an actual hard-wired landline phone, outside of a business line?
It’s the lock downs!
In Hong Kong, and China cell service is really cheap. Lots of people had multiple phones until the lockdown.
For example. Kids would have the phone their parents gave them AND a phone to call the boyfriend/girl friend that the parents don’t approve of. A job might give you a work phone, that you don’t use for private stuff. Men will have a “special phone in the office that they call the mistress on so the wife doesn’t see her number. My wife has a HK cell phone she uses here to talk to her sister because it is cheaper than a roaming plan in Houston. Taxi drivers in HK often have 5 to 7 cell phones in the cab, each that is called by a different dispatch group. I don’t know if it is a majority, but a significant percentage of people in China will have at least 3 cell phones.
I am not making any of that up.
A lot of those phones are on month to month contracts. If you’re quarantined in your home then you can’t get out and pay the monthly charge to keep the phone active. So, the phone goes dead, and cell numbers disappear.
Lemme see... If we modify that sentence a little, maybe we'll discover the underlying cause...
“It’s hard to find a credible reason to explain why the number of admitted gun owners in the US declined when the market had a big need for it in 2020”
Perhaps in each country the citizenry doesn't trust the government. And it's not good when the American people distrust their government every bit as much as the people in one of the most dictatorial countries on earth. Not good AT ALL. Shocking even. It shouldn't be that way. I'm pretty sure this is one of the things the Framers warned future generations about.
I have a landline because there is no cell coverage where I live. It also works when there is no power. It has advantages.
That or they activated their death camps again.
I still have one and won’t give it up.
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