Six Years since the Wuhan Lockdown: Seeking Accountability for a Historic Catastrophe

By Hu Ping

Six years ago, at 2:30 a.m. on January 23, 2020, the Wuhan municipal government issued its first announcement regarding the prevention and control of what came to be known as COVID-19. It declared that, effective 10:00 a.m. that day, all city transportation would be suspended and the city closed, with residents prohibited from leaving unless absolutely necessary. This event, now known as the Wuhan lockdown, occurred 23 days after the state-run People’s Daily first reported the discovery of the new virus in Wuhan on December 31, 2019.

In her diary entry on February 27, 2020, the writer Fang Fang wrote: “It is an indisputable fact that over twenty days were lost between the initial discovery of the virus and Wuhan’s lockdown. Where was the crux of this delay? Exactly who, and for what reason, provided the virus the time and space to spread, leading to a lockdown unprecedented in Wuhan’s history?”

The COVID-19 pandemic eventually spread from China to the entire world. According to public data from the World Health Organization (WHO), by March 19, 2020—nearly two months after the Wuhan lockdown began—the virus had reached over 150 countries and regions, and the number of global cases far exceeded those within China. This rare and massive pandemic profoundly reshaped global economics and politics. Within China, provinces and cities implemented draconian “dynamic zero-COVID” measures, resulting in severe restrictions on daily life, human rights violations, and frequent secondary disasters. Finally, in early December 2022, the Chinese government abruptly lifted the lockdown without any contingency plans or preparation, leading to a massive wave of deaths.

To date, the Chinese government’s attitude toward the Wuhan lockdown is denial: no mentions, no commemorations, and no review or evaluations. The most recent official document is a white paper titled “China’s Actions and Position on COVID-19 Prevention, Control, and Virus Tracing,” released by the State Council Information Office on April 30, 2025. This document primarily serves to counter external criticism and highlight China’s early contributions; its evaluation of the lockdown itself remains unchanged from the official rhetoric of 2020–2021, offering no new reflections or lessons learned. However, we must not let the spirit of accountability fade—such a historic catastrophe requires a full accounting.

1. Was the Cover-Up Directed by Local or Central Authorities?

In the immediate wake of the Wuhan lockdown, calls for accountability were widespread. Local officials in Wuhan were the primary targets of public outrage. The first question people asked was: Why was the outbreak not disclosed to the public immediately? A vital piece of context is the case of Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned colleagues in a WeChat group on December 30, 2019, about a “SARS-like virus,” only to be summoned and reprimanded by Wuhan police four days later. Dr. Li died of the virus on February 7.

Here’s a review of the timeline. On the afternoon of January 27, 2020, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted in a Chinese Central Television interview that the disclosure of the epidemic had not been timely. However, he then shifted the responsibility, stating: “Everyone needs to understand that because this is an infectious disease, it falls under the Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Law. It must be disclosed according to the law. As a local government official, I could only disclose the information once I had received it and been authorized to do so.”

On February 12, the official Wuhan website published an article (since deleted) titled “Why Not Give the Wuhan Mayor More Warmth as He Fights the Epidemic?” which revealed: “As early as December, when the outbreak occurred, Wuhan had already reported the situation to national health departments. An expert group also conducted an in-depth investigation in Wuhan and provided preliminary conclusions.”

On January 28, during a meeting with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Xi Jinping stated that regarding the pandemic response, “I have been personally commanding and personally deploying resources.” The February 15 issue of the Communist Party mouthpiece Qiushi published the full text of Xi’s February 3 speech, in which he claimed he had issued requirements for epidemic control as early as the January 7 Politburo Standing Committee meeting. This suggests that by January 7 at the latest, the response was under Xi’s “personal command.”

Chinese politics is almost never transparent. Xi has never elaborated on what those January 7 instructions actually were, and the original Xinhua News Agency report on that meeting did not mention the virus at all. All this evidence suggests that the responsibility for concealing the outbreak lies with the central government, not the local authorities.

Following the 2003 SARS crisis, the Chinese government spent vast sums to establish a national monitoring system for infectious diseases and public health emergencies. Coronaviruses like COVID-19 were a priority for this system, which launched on April 1, 2004. Furthermore, the Chinese government established the “National Emergency Plan for Public Health Emergencies” in 2006. Had the government activated these mechanisms and taken action when the virus was first detected, the outbreak might have been nipped in the bud, potentially averting a global catastrophe.

2. Global Spread: Did the Chinese Government Mislead the World?

Looking back, it is evident that the Chinese government provided false information and inaccurate data at the start of the pandemic, which severely misled the WHO and foreign governments. Dr. Gauden Galea, the WHO representative in China at the time, noted that the WHO was entirely dependent on information reported by China—including the critical question of human-to-human transmission—and therefore failed to issue timely warnings. Deborah Birx, a leader of the U.S. coronavirus task force, remarked that the medical community interpreted Chinese data to mean the situation was serious but manageable, not a potential global pandemic.

When Wuhan was locked down on January 23, some argued that the world should have understood the gravity of the situation then. However, this ignores the fact that the Chinese government’s propaganda at the time insisted the lockdown was a massive sacrifice that had contained the virus within China, buying the world time while overseas cases remained under 1%. This narrative continued to mislead the international community. Even on January 24, The Lancet editor Richard Horton stated there was no need to panic, and the WHO advised against travel restrictions. When the U.S. government announced a flight ban in late January, China denounced the move as “unkind.” The world was effectively blinded by a combination of flawed data and state propaganda.

3. Six Years Later, the Origin of the Virus Remains Unsolved

Today, six years after the lockdown, we still do not know if the virus was a natural spillover or a laboratory leak, nor if it was natural or synthetic.

From the beginning of the outbreak, many suspected a laboratory leak. This suspicion was based on the fact that while the virus is believed to have originated in bats from Yunnan, the outbreak occurred in Wuhan—thousands of kilometers away from those bat habitats. Furthermore, the Wuhan Institute of Virology houses the world’s largest collection of bat virus samples. Since the outbreak began in Wuhan, the lab was a logical suspect. Scientists also noted that SARS-CoV-2 possesses a unique “furin cleavage site” in its spike protein, a feature not found in similar coronaviruses, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been conducting “gain-of-function” research related to such features.

In contrast to the 2003 SARS outbreak—where the animal source, civet cats, was identified in five months—no animal host has been found for COVID-19 after six years. The scientific community still has doubts and cannot rule out a lab leak. The Chinese government’s refusal to allow independent investigations and its suppression of information have only deepened these suspicions. What is certain, however, is that the Chinese government’s early concealment and dissemination of false data constituted a severe violation of the International Health Regulations, for which it must be held accountable.

4. The Enigma of China’s COVID-19 Death Toll

WHO data suggests that by mid-January 2026, approximately 7.1 million people globally had died from COVID-19. Meanwhile, the death toll reported by the Chinese government stands at only 120,000.

This figure of 120,000 is widely viewed as false. Former China CDC Chief Epidemiologist Wu Zunyou provided data that suggests a much higher number. In January 2023, Wu stated that 80% of China’s population had been infected following the December 2022 reopening. He later cited a case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.08% for that period. Based on these numbers—1.4 billion people × 80% infection rate × 0.08% CFR—the death toll for those two months alone would be roughly 896,000.

Even 896,000 is likely an underestimate. The 0.08% CFR was an international average, but China’s situation was unique. China’s domestic vaccines were less effective, and because of the zero-COVID policy, the population lacked the hybrid immunity found in other countries where people had already been infected. For most Chinese citizens, the late 2022 wave was their first exposure to the virus. Consequently, the death toll was likely several times higher than the international average.

Because reliable data is unavailable, researchers often use “excess deaths” (the number of deaths above the historical average) as a proxy. While not all excess deaths are directly caused by COVID-19—some result from medical shortages, chronic disease neglect, or economic hardship—they provide the most accurate estimate of a pandemic’s impact.

In China, cremation data is a primary source for estimating deaths, as burial is largely prohibited. While many rural deaths during the peak of the pandemic went unrecorded due to overwhelmed crematoria or local burials, the available records are still telling.

By April 2023, The Wall Street Journal noted that official cremation reports from over 30 Chinese regions had either been deleted or were no longer being updated. However, a few scattered data points were leaked before being censored:

1. Zhejiang Province: In Q1 2023, cremations reached 171,000—a 72.7% increase over the previous year.

2. Changyuan, Henan: In the first half of 2023, cremations rose by 78.3% compared to the same period in 2022.

3. Huidong, Guangdong: Cremations from January to May 2023 increased by 114% year-on-year.

Extrapolating from these leaked figures, the number of excess deaths in China during the biggest wave from late 2022 to early 2023 was at least 4 million, and perhaps as high as 5.95 million. When combined with deaths from the preceding three years, the total represents a staggering loss of life that likely ranks among the highest in the world.

Many countries in the world botched handling the COVID-19 outbreak, but China’s case is still unique. The virus originated in China; thus, clarifying its origins should be a moral obligation of the Chinese government. In addition, the Chinese government had a unique opportunity to avoid the mass death found in other countries because of its initially successful lockdown strategy. However, its reckless decision to not take preventive measures such as using effective mRNA vaccines led to untold misery and a high death toll. Despite the difficulty, Chinese civil society must still push for a reckoning.

Recommended archive:

Hu Ping: The COVID-19 Catastrophe: A Disaster That Could Have Been Entirely Avoided

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Link：chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/c2b