There are 150 million Chinese who have pulmonary nodules, as state media recently revealed.
The number of pulmonary nodules patients has increased rapidly in mainland China since the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chinese communist regime has attributed the increase to more frequent scanning. Chinese citizens and an expert have expressed skepticism towards the official rhetoric, suspecting there are more reasons behind the huge number of infections.
State-owned media outlet National Business Daily reported on Jan. 8 that the number of Chinese people with lung nodules detected through routine physical examinations has reached approximately 120 million to 150 million—a figure even exceeding the number of diabetes patients in the country.
The report also pointed out that lung cancer ranks first in both incidence and mortality among malignant tumors in China, with approximately 75 percent of patients being diagnosed at an advanced stage, citing data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency under the World Health Organization.
However, the report didn’t mention what caused the staggering number of pulmonary nodules patients in China.
China’s pulmonologist and the regime’s top respiratory infectious diseases advisor Zhong Nanshan told state media in 2025 that a major reason for the increasing number of people with pulmonary nodules is the significant increase in the number of people receiving CT scans after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the discovery of more pulmonary nodules cases. Zhong said that there are many causes of pulmonary nodules, “in addition to the COVID-19, environmental pollution can also lead to their appearance.”
Possible Reasons, Reasonable Doubts
This is not a sudden phenomenon, but the result of the accumulation of multiple factors, said Xiaoxu Sean Lin, associate professor of Biomedical Science, Fei Tian College Northern Campus in New York.In addition to long-term exposure to environmental pollution, “long COVID (referring to symptoms lasting more than four weeks after COVID-19 infection) and problems related to Chinese domestic COVID-19 vaccines are the issues the authorities are most reluctant to address,” Lin told The Epoch Times.
COVID-19 has never left China, and many people have experienced repeated infections over the past few years, Lin said.
“The incidence of long COVID is very high, and the proportion of these patients with pulmonary nodules is also very high. Many people may still have pulmonary nodules even if they feel they have recovered from COVID-19.”
He pointed out that the early strains of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that caused COVID-19 “were most likely to cause lower respiratory tract infections,” noting that “when the virus first emerged in Wuhan, it primarily affected the lower respiratory tract, so lung infections were very common.”
In this situation, if the vaccine manufacturing process is substandard, “it will inevitably cause harm to some people, including developing pulmonary nodules,” Lin said.
The Chinese regime has never publicly disclosed the full extent of domestically produced COVID-19 vaccines’ side effects and long-term consequences.
“This is something the authorities are deliberately concealing,” Lin said. “Because the government doesn’t investigate, it’s very difficult for the public to see the full picture of the consequences of these COVID-19 vaccines.”
Mr. Liang, a patient with pulmonary nodules from Hebei Province who didn’t give his full name for safety concerns, told The Epoch Times that he developed pulmonary nodules after receiving the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021.
“I also developed several autoimmune diseases, including severe allergic asthma, chronic pharyngitis, mitral and tricuspid valve regurgitation, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, all of which appeared after receiving the vaccine,” he said.
“Almost everyone I know who received the vaccine has pulmonary nodules.”
After two years of seeking redress in vain, he said he and other people who suffer the same situation believe that “the medical association and the CDC experts are all in cahoots; it’s almost impossible for them to admit that it’s a side effect of the vaccine.”
Qian Dalong, a citizen in Beijing and a rights activist who had a stroke after being injected with Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine, told The Epoch Times that pulmonary nodules are “a common and insignificant condition compared to strokes, which are more prevalent after getting Chinese COVID-19 vaccines.”
Promoting State-Backed Insurance
National Business Daily dedicated most of the article to promoting insurance for pulmonary nodules.It said that West China Hospital of Sichuan University, in collaboration with insurance and technology companies, launched the nation’s first “digital therapy for comprehensive management of pulmonary nodules” in the first half of 2025. They claim it can cover hundreds of millions of people with pulmonary nodules.
Lin pointed out that this type of “insurance for people with preexisting conditions,” while seemingly innovative, actually “to some extent shifts public dissatisfaction with the state’s healthcare issues” and “transforms skepticism about government health care deficits into a new form of commercial health insurance to fill the financial gap.”
