In China’s Covid Fog, Deaths of Scholars Offer a Clue

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

Academy members, drawn from research institutions across the country, help shape national policy and direct research priorities. The engineering academy currently has about 900 members, and the science academy about 800, according to its website.

The obituary did not specify the cleric’s cause of death beyond “illness,” and the academy did not respond to requests for more specifics. But the surge late last year coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the country.

Infections have begun to rise in the fall, despite China’s strict “zero Covid” lockdown and mass testing policies. Then, after the government abruptly abandoned the policy in early December, amid economic meltdown and protests in many cities, cases surged.

During that chaotic time, hospitals turned away patients and funeral homes with the number of corpses. The government’s accounting, however, did not reflect the tragic scene – for weeks it reported only three dozen deaths – and led to widespread criticism for its lack of transparency.

The government has released more data in recent weeks, saying it is recording about 80,000 deaths since the lifting of Covid restrictions. Still, many experts say the figure may be low, as it only includes people who died in hospital; some have estimated that the death toll in China could exceed 1 million people in the coming months.

On Chinese social media, users shared the number of obituaries published by places like the two academies, to show that the actual death toll is higher than the official figure.

Any count may be incomplete because the government largely rejects Covid tests, including in hospitals, said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “The reality is that the government may not know everything,” he said.

“It’s the government’s job” to collect and share accurate information, Dr. Jin continued. “But he didn’t do his job.”

The dead included a molecular biologist, a nuclear physicist and an agricultural chemist. One member of the academy, Ma Jianzhang, 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.

Reached by phone, Professor Ma’s relatives said they did not know if he had been infected with Covid, as he had not been tested. He had other underlying illnesses, he added.

“To the outside world, they may have good achievements or influence,” Fu Qun said. “For the family, he is more important as a spiritual leader. We all respect him very much.

Data gleaned from obituaries is far from conclusive. The institution also did not answer questions about whether obituaries – during the outbreak and before – had been completed for all the scholars who died.

However, obituaries published by other institutions show similar spikes in late December and early January.

From 2019 to 2021, Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top engineering schools, published between one and three obituaries for professors and staff members per month. Between December and last month, announced 29 deaths.

University-wide obituaries are not publicly available for Peking University, one of the most prestigious in China. But some individual departments publish obituaries for their own professors and staff.

The dead included Luo Xiaochun, 68, former library director of the Foreign Language department; Zhao Binghua, 91, founder of Peking University’s nursing school, who remembers juggling marriage and caring for two children with work as a pediatrician in the 1960s; and Guo Xiliang, 93, a linguist who continued to publish books on ancient Chinese phonetics into his 90s.

Professor Guo had been infected with the coronavirus at the time of his death, according to Zhang Meng, a former student and fellow professor at Peking University.

In December, Peking University and Tsinghua University, Beijing’s other top schools, issued notices calling for more protections for retired faculty and staff.

Chinese health officials say the outbreak peaked in late December and cases have continued to decline. But the country still has not solved many problems in the health system, such as less effective vaccines and insufficient hospital beds, said Professor Jin, in Hong Kong.

“That means, even if you have a small spike in the future, more people will die,” he said. “If they don’t learn their lesson, this will be a new situation.”