Experts say possible reasons include weakened immunity, vaccination side effects, stress, and other infectious diseases.
Amid continuing distrust of the Chinese regime’s data on infectious diseases and vaccination deaths, anecdotal reports from residents and health care professionals across China suggest an unusual number of deaths among millennials this winter season.
Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics does not regularly publish data on mortality rates. Because of the regime’s record of publishing unreliable data, including its underreporting of COVID-19 infections in early 2020, analysts and the public often resort to relying on anecdotal evidence.
In February, individuals working in China’s disease prevention and control sector told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the regime is likely underreporting the recent COVID-19 and bird flu infections.
Also speaking to the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times in early March, Chinese residents from several provinces, whose full names are not mentioned because of safety concerns, said there have been many deaths among “post-80s” and “post-90s,” or those born in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them voiced their suspicion that the deaths may be caused by the side effects of COVID-19 vaccination.
Experts told The Epoch Times that reasons younger people may be dying at a higher rate include weakened immunity following the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination side effects, stress, and other infectious diseases such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, which the regime is underreporting.
According to a medical doctor from China’s eastern Jiangsu Province who uses alias Zhang Liang, there have been numerous sudden deaths from heart attacks and cerebral infarctions among people in their 30s and 40s since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s hard to know the scale of the deaths.
As for what may have caused the deaths, Zhang said: “Some say it’s from COVID-19 infections, but medical personnel are saying it’s from the COVID-19 vaccines. They are all saying that but can’t say it publicly. The collection of these data is not allowed either. It’s possible top-level [doctors] have [the information], but ordinary doctors don’t have access to them,” he told The Epoch Times.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, domestically-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines were used in China’s vaccination programs. Some local authorities sought to increase the vaccination rate by banning unvaccinated individuals from certain public places or using force to vaccinate people. Some recipients of the Sinovac vaccine reported side effects, including leukemia, diabetes, pulmonary nodules, cerebral hemorrhage, and cerebral infarction. In 2024, a group of vaccine injury victims told The Epoch Times they were planning to petition the regime during the Chinese Communist Party’s annual Two Sessions in Beijing, but they were being surveilled and intercepted by the police, who regularly use that practice on political dissidents and people with grievances.
According to Zhang, “After the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s hardly anyone in good health. Most people are in sub-health, and their physical indicators are a bit abnormal. Moreover, 70 to 80 percent of people have nodules in their bodies, especially lung nodules, which almost everyone has.”
Mr. Li, a resident of Guangzhou City in south China, said many young and middle-aged people around him had died this year.
“Many people around me suffered from vomiting, diarrhea, fever, cough, and chronic cough. They have been taking injections for 10 days or half a month but still have not recovered,” Li said.
“Many of those who died suddenly were young people in their 20s and 30s, and some were in their 40s and 50s. They have received many doses of vaccines, three or four shots, as well as booster shots,” he told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Li from Linfen, China’s Northern Shanxi province, told The Epoch Times two of her child’s colleagues, who were in their 30s, had died suddenly around the time when the state-owned enterprise was requiring staff to get vaccinated.
She said that the company had an eight-hour working schedule, suggesting the staff were unlikely to be victims of overwork deaths.
Mr. Wang, a resident of Liupanshui City of Guizhou Province in southwest China, said he had been to four funerals this year amid a wave of severe respiratory infections since the Chinese New Year in late January, during which many people developed pneumonia and died.
“Many people died during the Chinese New Year. Our local funeral home normally cremates two or three people a day; it had to cremate more than 20 bodies a day during the period,” he said.
“Some people in their 40s and 50s had fever, developed pneumonia, and just died,” he said. He added that more had died in the year when COVID restrictions ended.
According to Wang, in their local area, all industries are struggling, except hospitals. “Their business is booming. The hospitals are busier than the shopping malls,” he said.
Mr. Li, a villager in Zhoukou of Henan Province in northern China, also told The Epoch Times that a local epidemic was raging this winter, with young people dying in surrounding villages.
“Many people had fever and colds with severe symptoms and died one after another. The hospitals were overcrowded and there were not enough beds. People died in waves. Many people had pneumonia, heart attacks, and cerebral infarctions. A lot of people have died suddenly in their 30s and 40s,” he said.
Because of the sluggish economy, many locals discreetly buried their dead to save cremation costs, Li said.
“They were buried under family land. If no one reports them, the government doesn’t do anything.”
Mr. Zuo, a resident of the southwest Sichuan province, also reported crowded hospitals and deaths among younger people.
“Many people around me died recently, many of them are post-80s. Four or five people in their 40s and 50s died as well,” he said.
“They were said to have died from influenza but had similar symptoms with COVID-19 patients,” he said, adding that the victims didn’t have physical vulnerabilities.
“During the Chinese New Year, funeral homes couldn’t schedule all the funerals. [Families] had to queue, bribe [funeral home staff], or use connections. There are also many who buried their dead. In rural areas, as long as you have land, you can bury the dead.”
Possible Reasons
Tang Jingyuan, U.S.-based current affairs commentator and medical doctor, told The Epoch Times on March 11 that vaccine-induced heart problems are among the main reasons that “post-80s” could be dying at a higher rate.
Another important factor, he said, is that those born in the 1980s are the first generation with no siblings because of the Chinese regime’s one-child policy, meaning an average couple has to take care of four parents and at least one child.
The generation has to “shoulder more social and family obligations and work, which will lead to greater mental and physical stress for the entire age group. This may also be a major factor in the particularly high mortality rate of the post-80s generation,” he said.
Sean Lin, assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College and former U.S. Army microbiologist, said that vaccination side effects are widely affecting young and middle-aged people in China. The increased deaths are more likely driven by weakened immunity following the COVID-19 pandemic or other infectious diseases, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, the scale of which may be covered up by the Chinese regime,
Beijing has stayed quiet on bird flu outbreaks in poultries in the country despite poultry farmers’ claims on social media in February that the disease had decimated flocks of birds.
According to two workers in China’s disease prevention and control system, the regime has covered up the severity of respiratory disease outbreaks in the country. One of the workers also said there had been limited human-to-human transmission of H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu.
Crackdown on Death Rate Claim
The anecdotal reports of millennial deaths came as Chinese police cracked down on a viral video that claimed around one in 20 “post-80s” has died.
The post claims that the figure was calculated by comparing population data from the seventh census, which was conducted in 2020, and estimated births during the 1980s. The Epoch Times has not been able to verify official data.
State media Xinhua news agency cited Li Ting, a professor at the Renmin University’s School of Population and Health, saying the figure is seriously inconsistent with the facts.
A summary report of the seventh census published by Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics does not include a detailed breakdown of China’s population in 2020. It contains an estimated population size for the age group 15–64, which includes post-80s, who are now between 36 and 45.
In a blog published on March 3 on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, the Ministry of Public Security’s online security branch said it had penalized Xia, who posted the video, for “fabricating” the figure. Two others were given “administrative punishment,” and six people were cautioned, according to police. The punishment was not specified, but it could include a warning, a fine, a ban, or administrative detention for up to 20 days.
Wen Xin, Xiong Bin, and Luo Ya contributed to this report.