Residents report crowded crematoriums and empty areas in China

Chinese residents across the country continue to make clear on social media and era that local hospitals and crematoriums, Chinese villages and towns, and even major cities roads look eerie skywards.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Uhan, China, a wave of massive respiratory infections has been appearing almost every year throughout China. Analysts and the public often rely on anecdotal narratives and evidence for administration records of publishing unreliable data, including underreporting COVID-19 infections in early 2020.

Chen, a truck driver in Fujian Province in southeastern China, told the Epoch Times that he only gave his last name for safety reasons, and many people he knows have died in the past two years. He said he had heard from many acquaintances that the situation was similar across the country.

Early in the pandemic, the national funeral homes were operating at full capacity, but were unable to keep up with demand. Authorities then expanded and renovated the national funeral home, increasing the speed of corpses cremated after the renovation, Chen said.

He said a few years ago, there were so many bodies waiting for cremation that there wasn’t enough furnace to bake them. “At the time, when you send out your relatives, you had to queue up to the queue for several days, or even half a month.”

Chen said the number of deaths seen in China remains in place over the past few years. Now many of his relatives and friends have passed away.

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He compared it to the past. “In 10-20 years, only one friend died,” he said. “In recent years I have seen funerals happen every day. I often go outside and (always) see my hearing.”

Regarding the claims of the Chinese ruling Communist Party (CCP), China’s population is 1.4 billion, Chen said official data is unreliable.

Li, a villager in Zhoukou in northern China’s Henan province, said he only gave his surname for safety reasons, and recently all local hospitals have been overcrowded with patients, with many people dying from conditions like pneumonia, heart attacks and ischemic stroke.

Most of the deceased were individuals who would otherwise appear healthy in their 30s or 40s.

He said in recent years local villages with a population of around 500-600 people have reported many deaths. Some died before being sent to hospital, he said of their condition.

“The poor people are like ants, they are dead and buried quietly. Their families cannot afford cremation. This type of situation is too common today,” he said.

Tan, a resident of Tonghua, Jilling Province in northeastern China, told the Epoch Times that she only gave her last name for safety reasons, and that her daughter brought her sick child to the hospital for treatment, finding that the local hospital was overcrowded with patients and overcrowded the past few weeks. She also said a friend who attended a relative’s funeral in early April told her that the crematorium was overcrowded.

Tan said many people have died in her sister’s neighborhood in her younger sister’s neighborhood in the last few months, including people in her 40s, 50s and 60s.

“So, China’s overall population has experienced a huge cliff-like charge within just a few years, which is a perfect and rational explanation for people’s observations,” he said.

During the CCP’s “zerocovid” lockdown between 2020 and the end of 2022, Tan said the number of people who died in the Chinese outbreak is already very large.

China’s official Covid-19 death toll in February 2023 was 83,150. During the same period, India reported a confirmed death toll of 531,794 size. The government has warned that more deaths have not been reported because it has not curbed the 1.4 billion population for its 1.4 billion population, similar to the Chinese population claims.

During the same period, the US, which has a well-tested population of 343.48 million, reported 1.1 million confirmed deaths.

In 2025, China data shared with the World Health Organization brought the official death toll to 122,398. India’s confirmed deaths were 533,662, with the US confirming 1.22 million deaths.

Tan believes that all waves of such outbreaks have caused many deaths in China. “China’s communist government is covering up the death toll.”

A recent video noted that when China reported 1.2 billion people in the early 2010s, it was far more crowded in Chinese villages and cities, and that as long as they could see, people were packed with as many people as they could see. However, this does not currently apply to the CCP’s claims for a population of 1.4 billion.

Regarding why China’s fast-reduced population is attracting attention from Chinese people, Tan said, “It has a late effect on the massive disappearance of the population. It takes time for many signs to appear.” He added that China’s centrally planned economy is another reason.

He noted that China’s economy had not yet been in a major crisis, even during the epidemic, years ago.

“There were still many people across the country to hurry to work in these tier 1 and tier 2 cities. Even if there were massive deaths in these cities, they were soon filled by many new migrant workers.

After China’s economy has declined due to structural issues and a US-led trade war, employment opportunities in many tier 1 and 2 cities have also declined, with fewer migrant workers coming to cities to fill population gaps, he said. “So it suddenly became clear that the population had dropped significantly.”

Luo Ya, Fang Xiao and Xiong Bin contributed to this report.