In China’s Covid fog, scholarly deaths offer clues

We reviewed obituaries published over the past four years by the state-backed Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Members of the academies, drawn from research institutions across the country, help shape national policy and advance research priorities. The Engineering Academy currently has about 900 members and the Science Academy has about 800 members, according to their websites.

The obituaries did not specify the scholar’s cause of death beyond “illness,” and the academies did not respond to requests for more specifics. But the spike late last year coincided with the rapid spread of the coronavirus across the country.

Infections had already started to rise in the autumn, despite China’s strict “zero covid” policy of lockdowns and mass testing. Then, after the government suddenly abandoned the policy in early December, amid a slump in the economy and protests in many cities, cases skyrocketed.

During that chaotic period, hospitals turned away patients and funeral homes staggered under the number of bodies. However, the government’s accounting did not reflect those tragic scenes — it reported only three dozen deaths for weeks — and it drew widespread criticism for a lack of transparency.

In recent weeks the government has released more data it says it has documented 80,000 This is the number of deaths since the lifting of Covid restrictions. Still, many experts say that figure may be lower because it only includes people who died in hospitals; Some estimate that the death toll in China could exceed 1 million in the coming months.

On Chinese social media, users have pointed to a soaring number of published executions from places like the two academies, suggesting the actual death toll is higher than the official figure.

Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said any count is likely to be incomplete because the government has largely abandoned testing for Covid, including in hospitals. “The reality is that even the government doesn’t know everything,” he said.

Collecting and sharing accurate information is “the government’s job”, says Dr. Jin continued. “But they’re not doing their job.”

Among the dead were molecular biologists, nuclear physicists and experts in agricultural chemistry. One Academy member, Ma Jianzhong, 86, is a wildlife scientist specializing in Siberian tigers. He helped establish the country’s only college for wildlife and nature reserves and led groups including the China Zoological Society and the China Wildlife Conservation Association.

When contacted by phone, a relative of Prof Ma said he did not know if he had contracted Covid as he had not been tested. He said he had other underlying illnesses.

“To the outside world, he may be someone with great achievements or influence,” said relative Fu Kun. “For our family, he was more important as a spiritual leader. We all respected him very much.”

Data obtained from executions is far from conclusive. The institutes did not answer questions about whether the obituaries — sudden and earlier — were comprehensive of all scholars who died.

Still, deaths published by other agencies showed similar spikes in late December and early January.

From 2019 to 2021, Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the top engineering schools in the world, has announced one to three rites of passage for professors and staff members during those months. Between December and last month, it announced 29 deaths.

For Peking University, China’s most prestigious, university-wide executions were not publicly available. But some individual departments issued obituaries for their own professors and staff.

Among the dead were Luo Xiaochun, 68, former library director for the Department of Foreign Languages; Zhao Binghua, 91, founder of Peking University’s nursing school, recalled juggling housework and care for her two children with her duties as a pediatrician in the 1960s; and Guo Xiliang, 93, a linguist who continued to publish books on ancient Chinese phonetics into his 90s.

According to Zhang Meng, a former student and colleague of the Peking University professor, Professor Guo was infected with the coronavirus at the time of his death.

In December, Peking University and Tsinghua University, another top-ranked school in Beijing, issued notices demanding more protections for retired faculty and staff.

Chinese health officials say the outbreak peaked in late December and cases are steadily declining. But the country has yet to address many of the underlying problems in its health system, such as low effective vaccines and insufficient hospital beds, Professor Jin said in Hong Kong.

“That means, even if you have smaller spikes in the future, more people will still die,” he said. “If they don’t learn their lesson, that’s a new situation.”