But recently Beijing authorities announced on March 19 that more than 21 million cell phone accounts were cancelled while in past three months 840,000 landlines were closed in China, which gives an idea that probably these closed numbers belonged to the people who died due to the disease.
Tang Jingyuan, a US-based China Affairs commentator told The Epoch Times on March 21: "The digitization level is very high in China. People can't survive without a cell phone. Dealing with the government for pensions and social security, buying train tickets, shopping... no matter what people want to do, they are required (forced by the authorities) to use cell phones.
"The Chinese regime requires all Chinese use their cell phones to generate a health code. Only with a green health code are Chinese allowed to move in China now. It's impossible for a person to cancel his cell phone."
The Chinese authority introduced mandatory facial scans on December 1, 2019, to confirm the identity of the person who registered the phone. The people in China also have to sync their bank accounts and social security account with their cell phone as all the apps can detect the SIM card and then check with the database to make sure the number belongs to the person.
In China, it is mandatory to install a cell phone app and register their personal health information. The app can generate a QR code which is possible in three colours to classify a person's health condition.
In this case, red means the person has an infectious disease, while yellow and green represent the possibility of infectious disease and no sign of such illness respectively. Beijing claimed that the health code has helped China to prevent the spread of Coronavirus in the country where 81,496 people got infected by the COVID-19.
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| Every Chinese has a mobile phone as every one in China is forced to have one. |
What about 21 million cell phone accounts?
On March 19, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced the numbers of cell phone users in every province in February. When these numbers are compared to the December 2019 data, it revealed that both cell phone users and landline users dropped dramatically.
The comparison showed that the number of cell phone users decreased from 1.600957 billion to 1.579927 billion, while landline users dropped from 190.83 million to 189.99 million. It is possible that the nationwide lockdown in February was the reason behind the drop in the numbers of landline users as many companies were shut down, the quarantine scenario can't be a reason behind the drop in the cell phone users.
It should be noted that as per the reports China Telecom is the second-largest carrier which has lost 5.6 million users in February 2020 and lost 0.43 million users in January 2020. China Unicom also lost 1.186 million users in January 2020.
While the drop in these numbers showed a dramatic scenario in China, Tang said, "It's possible that some migrant workers had two cell phone numbers before. One is from their hometown, and the other is from the city they work in. In February, they might close the number in the city they work in because they couldn't go there."
It is possible that these workers may have gone to their home city for the Chinese New Year and after the travel ban, they did not get a chance to come back to China. It should be noted that in China there is a basic monthly fee to hold a cell phone account and the majority of migrant workers, who belong to the lowest income group, likely only have one cell phone account.
The economic downturn caused by the outbreak could have forced the Chinese people, who have two cell phones to cancel one of them. While explaining the scenario in China, Tang said,"At present, we don't know the details of the data. If only 10 percent of the cell phone accounts were closed because the users died because of the CCP virus [Novel Coronavirus], the death toll would be two million."
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| Once one is dying in a Wuhan hospital one's mobilephone straight away goes into the smartphones pile, and once one doesn't pay monthly fee the account is immediately cancelled. |
China’s wireless carriers are reporting drops in users as the coronavirus crisis cuts business activity, with China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest carrier, reporting its first net decline since starting to report monthly data in 2000.
China Mobile subscriptions fell by more than 8 million over January and February, data on the company’s website show. China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. subscribers fell by 7.8 million in the period, while China Telecom Corp. has said it lost 5.6 million users last month.
The rare industrywide slump in subscribers shows the pandemic crisis that first emerged in China late last year is crimping growth even at businesses that provide essential services and earn monthly revenue.
Part of the drop could be caused by migrant workers -- who often have one subscription for where they work and another for their home region -- canceling their work-region account after the virus prevented them from returning to work after the Lunar New Year holidays that began in late January, said Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
China Mobile shares fell 2.7% in Hong Kong trading Monday, compared with a 4.9% slump for the benchmark Hang Seng Index. China Telecom slid 6.3%, while China Unicom declined 6.4%. While the drop in users is unusual, the total is small relative to total wireless subscriptions which have risen to a combined 1.6 billion for the three carriers.
Things may improve starting this month as work in factories and other businesses in China resumes, Lane said. Net income fell 9.5% last year at China Mobile, partly on government mandates to cut prices and improve service. The company, which reported earnings last week, told analysts revenue would remain stable this year, a sign management was not worried about the fall in subscribers, Lane said.
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| In Communist China once one has the Wuhan Virus one does not need a mobile phone, no more. |
