Scholars at Sun Yat-sen University Die Amid Spike in COVID Infections

Scholars at Sun Yat-sen University Die Amid Spike in COVID Infections
A subway staff member removes a poster for a COVID-19 health code used upon entering the subway in Guangzhou in China's southern Guangdong province, following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in the city, on Dec. 7, 2022. (CNS/AFP via Getty Images)
Jessica Mao
12/30/2022
Updated:
12/30/2022

A number of Chinese experts and scholars—most of them members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—have died in the recent COVID-19 outbreak, including faculty members at Sun Yat-sen University, a major national university in southern China’s Guangdong Province.

On Dec. 27, Sun Yat-sen University sent an obituary saying that He Zikun, a professor at the university engaged in teaching and researching Marxist and Plekhanov’s ideology, died on Dec. 26, at the age of 90 due to illness.

He is a CCP member and served as the director of the Guangdong Marxist Philosophy Research Association and the director of the Guangdong Socialist Dialectics Research Association.

Another who died at 90 is Qiu Hankang, a CCP member and a retired professor in the university’s Department of Chinese Language and Literature. He died on Dec. 18 because of “illness.”

Recent official obituaries of almost all state agencies and public institutions have vaguely claimed that all deaths are due to “illness” and further details are not provided, even if the deaths are caused by COVID-19.

COVID-19 infection cases and the death toll in Guangzhou have soared. Local medical workers disclosed to the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Dec.23 that the hospital morgue is overwhelmed because of the recent surge of deaths, and the number of bodies is still increasing with nowhere to store them.
Employees work at a makeshift hospital that will be used for COVID-19 patients in Guangzhou, in China's eastern Guangdong province on April 11, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Employees work at a makeshift hospital that will be used for COVID-19 patients in Guangzhou, in China's eastern Guangdong province on April 11, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Previous obituaries published by Sun Yat-sen University include other CCP members.

On Dec. 19, Ouyang Lisi, 43, a faculty member in the Human Anatomy Department of the Institute of Medicine, died of “illness.” The obituary called Ouyang “a passionate believer in the CCP’s education.”

On Dec. 16, Cheng Jianding, 49, Sun Yat-sen University’s deputy director of the Forensic Identification Center, deputy director of the Department of Forensic Medicine, and director of the Department of Forensic Pathology, died on Dec. 15 as he was “involved in a traffic incident.”

Cheng also serves as a member of the Party Committee of Zhongshan Medical College of Sun Yat-sen University and was the secretary of the Party Branch of the Department of Forensic Medicine.

On Dec. 10, Jiang Zhiqiang, 40, a CCP member and an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Medicine, died of “a sudden illness.”

Jiang’s death shocked many students and faculty, as he had been a host of the campus academic salon at the end of last month, according to the official media Southern Metropolis Daily.

On Nov. 30, Peng Baogang, 59, an expert in hepatobiliary surgery, director of the Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery Center of the First Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, and editorial board member of the Chinese Journal of Practical Surgery, died due to “ineffective treatment.”

Organ Harvesting at the University Hospital

The First Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, where Peng worked, has been listed by human rights investigators as participating in forced organ harvesting, a practice where people are murdered in order to provide organs for China’s booming organ transplant industry.
On March 14, 2006, the Guangzhou Daily, a Chinese state-run media, reported: “Recently, in the operation room of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, the reporter witnessed 5 liver and 6 kidney transplants being conducted simultaneously,” reported End Transplant Abuse in China.
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong wrote: “The Organ Transplantation Department of the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University is suspected to be one of the main birthplaces of live organ harvesting for transplantation in China.”

He Xiaoshun, a member of the Expert Committee of the Human Organ Donation Commission and vice president of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, said to the Southern Weekly, a state-run media, in March 2010, “The year 2000 was a watershed for the organ transplant industry in China. … The number of liver transplants in 2000 reached 10 times that of 1999; in 2005, the number tripled further [since 2000].”

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a peaceful meditation practice with five gentle exercises that places emphasis on improving moral character by following the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The CCP began to brutally persecute the practice in 1999 after its numbers had grown to an estimated 100 million adherents in China.