China drops cremation data from quarterly report, raising questions about key Covid death indicator

China did not release data on the number of cremation services held in the fourth quarter of 2022, blocking from public view a key indicator of death during the country’s first nationwide Covid-19 wave last winter.

On the national level, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has scrapped the figure from its quarterly release of national civil affairs data, which was published on June 9.

This defied the ministry’s long-time practice, dating back to 2007, of releasing cremation numbers on a quarterly basis.

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Before 2020, fourth-quarter cremation data was typically released in the first two months of the following year, along with other civil affairs data such as social welfare and marriage registrations.

Though the time lag for data releases has increased slightly since 2020, when the country was first hit by Covid-19, the most recent release came after a longer-than-average delay of six months after the end of the quarter.

Several provincial-level regions also scrapped the release of cremation services data for the fourth quarter of last year.

On June 9, the same day the national numbers were released, Chongqing’s civil affairs bureau published a notice that said it would suspend the release of civil affairs data indefinitely following an instruction from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

It also said 2023 data would be temporarily withheld and would be “synchronised with the new provisions on data publication in the newly approved ‘Statistical Survey System for Civil Affairs’ by the National Bureau of Statistics”.

A tally by the Post found that over a dozen provincial-level regions defied their past practices and dropped cremation numbers from public releases. Some, including Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and the municipalities of Chongqing and Beijing, released their fourth-quarter data largely on time but skipped the cremation service numbers.

Others including Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces have not yet released any of their fourth-quarter civil affairs data.

Of the provinces included in the Post’s tally, only Yunnan had published any 2023 civil affairs data as of Thursday, and that still did not include cremation numbers – casting doubts on whether information about funeral services would be made public in the future.

The omission of cremation numbers has made it more difficult for the public to understand the scale of deaths from China’s winter Covid-19 wave.

China’s official data put Covid-related deaths at 83,150 from mid-December to early February, a number many outsiders said was an underestimate.

Airfinity, a UK-based health data company, estimated that up to 2.1 million lives were lost in the winter outbreak.

In late 2022, researchers from the University of Hong Kong estimated that the outbreak that began after China ditched its zero-Covid policy in December could cause 970,000 deaths by the end of January.

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Many countries accused China of a lack of transparency, and residents were angered over what some said was a poorly planned wind-down of strict pandemic controls.

But in February, Beijing called the country’s successful exit from the zero-Covid policy a “miracle” and hailed its “decisive victory” over the pandemic.

In January, the country’s top economic planner estimated that the population aged 65 and above had risen by 9.22 million in 2022.

According to the NBS, which releases death statistics on an annual basis, there were 10.4 million deaths nationwide in 2022, up from 10.1 million the year before.

China made an abrupt U-turn on its zero-Covid policy in December, leaving many swept up in a massive outbreak and suffering from shortages of critical medical resources, and hospitals and funeral homes around the country were overwhelmed.