On Jan. 17, the CCP’s mouthpiece “Legal Daily” published an article claiming that personal information collected during the pandemic was being disposed of in 2023 by various municipal and provincial governments around the country.
According to the article, on Feb. 16, 2023, the Health Commission of Guangdong Province released an official announcement stating that services such as COVID-19 self-testing, health declaration, health code, and pandemic prevention workstations would cease to be available that day. Meanwhile, all relevant personal data would be deleted after the services stopped.
On March 2, an event was held in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, to destroy pandemic-related personal data, with the initial batch of 1 billion entries deleted. A third-party auditing organization and a notary public were invited to monitor the process.
3 Reasons Behind Destroying Personal Data
On Jan. 29, U.S.-based China current affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan said in an interview with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that there are three reasons behind the CCP’s move to destroy personal data collected during the pandemic.
“First of all,“ Mr. Tang said, ”the main purpose is to send a message to the outside world that China’s economic and social life has completely returned to normal. So if foreign investors and business people want to enter China, they don’t have to worry about anything.”
The CCP’s second purpose in destroying the data was to conceal the actual death toll during the three-year pandemic, Mr. Tang said, adding that at the time, the CCP had been deliberately reporting a lower death count to showcase the “superiority” of its political system to the world.
“By fabricating a seemingly low death toll, the CCP has been trying to publicize that its policy of extreme lockdowns is effective and is a unique advantage of its so-called socialist system,” he said. “The CCP has even linked it to its governance ability and legitimacy. Therefore, by destroying the data now, the CCP is also trying to promote its so-called institutional advantages and emphasize that the lockdowns were good measures.”
Mr. Tang explained that the CCP’s third motive for destroying data is to eliminate any records of side effects linked to its COVID-19 vaccines. He pointed out that the data gathered by Chinese authorities included details about every vaccine recipient. Over the past three years, many allegations of the vaccine’s side effects began to mount. In particular, the death of Hong Kong actress Kathy Chow gained a lot of public attention because many suspected that it was related to the adverse effects of the vaccine.
Ms. Chow died on Dec. 11, 2023, in Beijing after suffering from lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease. During the pandemic, she posted videos on social media of her receiving the vaccine, which caused the public to raise questions about the cause of her death.
“The CCP knows that China’s vaccines have serious side effects, which may emerge en masse in the future,“ Mr. Tang said. ”Therefore, the CCP has destroyed all the data in such a way that if people suffer from vaccine-related illnesses, they cannot provide evidence to prove that the injuries they have suffered are directly related to the vaccines.”
COVID Vaccine Production Halted
The production of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, which was aggressively promoted worldwide by the CCP, was recently halted, once again placing the safety of China’s vaccines under scrutiny. The CCP’s vaccine has been widely criticized for its side effects.On Jan. 10, a document from China’s Sinovac Biotech circulated on social media, stating that “all production of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine has been suspended, and there are currently no sales of COVID-19 vaccine products.”
Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine was one of the first vaccines launched for use in China and became its most widely used and exported COVID-19 vaccine.
Since the launch of China’s vaccines, their effectiveness and safety have been widely questioned domestically and internationally. Many people in China have complained on social media about side effects, including measles, leukemia, and diabetes, and have questioned whether a large number of sudden deaths were related to the vaccine.
Jiang Yong (a pseudonym), a resident of the coastal Chinese province of Jiangsu, previously told The Epoch Times that more than a dozen of his family members had allegedly died within a year of receiving the vaccine.
Qiu Yongcai, a 40-year-old professor at China’s South China University of Technology, died at Guangzhou First Hospital on Dec. 3, 2023, according to Chinese media reports. Before he died, he reportedly underwent a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. He left a message on his social media account, claiming that he was suffering from side effects of the vaccine. However, the post was immediately deleted.
The CCP has refuted claims that Chinese-made vaccines may have caused some illnesses. Amid mounting public pressure, the CCP claimed that high-ranking officials were vaccinated with the homegrown vaccines. However, this claim quickly triggered doubts and backlash from the Chinese public.
