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Coronavirus China
ChinaPolitics

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

  • Ministry of Civil Affairs scraps figure from delayed statistics release, and provinces also appear to be withholding the information
  • The omission makes it harder to understand impact of last winter’s Covid-19 wave, which swept the nation after Beijing’s U-turn on pandemic measures

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A man carries a box containing cremated ashes near a funeral house in Wuhan, China during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in April 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE
Sylvie Zhuangin Beijing
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.

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”.

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