Millions of Cancer Cases—And No One Knows the Truth

China's got a cancer problem. I'm not talking about the CCP. Welcome to China Uncensored, I'm Chris Chappell. You know, the Chinese Communist Party is like a cancer. Always growing in power, slowly spreading into every aspect of Chinese people's lives. But you know what's worse than the cancer of communism? Actual cancer. And China's full of it. Eatsai Global recently reported that new cancer cases Now at first you might think, that's not strange. China is a large, very populous, and aging country. But it's more than just that. After all, we're talking about a country that is absolutely notorious for looking like this much of the year. Makes me want to cough just looking at it. This came about because of the CCP's obsession with industrialization, and being the world's manufacturing hub, regardless of the costs. And it turns out breathing poison isn't good for you. Who knew? Even though China declared war on pollution more than a decade ago, and the CCP loves to brag about how its air quality has improved since the 2010s, China is still one of the most air polluted countries on the planet. In fact, air quality is actually getting worse in China's southern and western regions. Thanks to manufacturing expanding there, all that air pollution increases the odds of developing lung cancer, especially lung adenocarcinoma, which is a scientific way of saying, uh oh. So it's no surprise that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer incidents and mortality in China. Even people who have never smoked aren't safe from lung cancer. They're getting 24-7, second-hand, foot-and-mouth smoke. There's so much lung cancer going around in China. How much lung cancer is there? That the Lancet says Chinese men and women make up over 68% and 70% respectively of global adenocarcinoma cases in 2022. Not exactly a hilarious punchline to that setup, but accurate. But it's not just the air that's toxic. It's also the land. And more importantly, the water. That's definitely not the color a river is supposed to be. And it hasn't produced one superhero. Comic books did not prepare me for the actual danger of toxic waste. This has led to the rise of so-called cancer villages, which got a lot of international attention in the 2000s and early 2010s. Yes, things have gotten so bad, there's a term for entire villages, especially in rural areas, getting cancer thanks to willful CCP negligence. I can't tell if that's better or worse than China's AIDS villages. But that's a story for another episode. It's no coincidence that in 2013, The Guardian reported cancer mortality rates in China had risen by 80% over the previous three decades. And the problem hasn't gotten any better. Industry-related health complications are still a very real risk in China. As one of many, many examples, just last year, over 200 children were hospitalized with severe lead poisoning. The Chinese media blamed lead-tainted food. And the Western media bought that explanation. But there was evidence to suggest that actually tainted water from a state-owned lead-zinc transfer station located just up the road from the school may have been the culprit. Of course, we'll probably never know for sure, because the CCP did what it always does. It hid the data, intimidated people who tried to come forward with information, and shoved everything under the rug. And that's the bigger problem when it comes to cancer in China. Zero transparency. In fact, in China, it's hard to even know who has cancer. You see, Chinese law requires medical professionals to tell the truth. But it also adds that they must avoid causing adverse social impact. Or another way to put it, avoid adverse consequences of telling the truth. But hey, what people don't know won't hurt them. Unless, of course, it's cancer. Or AIDS. That matters a lot, because in practice, Chinese physicians are resorting to something called family consent for disclosure. In other words, most doctors are choosing to inform the families first, not the patients. They're leaving it up to the families to tell their patients instead. And oftentimes, Chinese families are choosing to hide cancer diagnoses from patients just to avoid emotional distress. It's like the world's darkest surprise party, and the party is the Chinese Communist Party. One 2017 psycho-oncology study said that only 12 to 42% of cancer patients were fully informed either by their doctors or family members in China. Even cancer researchers have problems accessing cancer data. That's because China's cancer registry has glaring issues like missing information on paper report cards, inadequate digitalization and standardization in case reporting, incomplete follow-up and survival status, lack of linkage with other healthcare data sources, and no explicit instructions on data access for external users. Because if you can't conclusively prove the cause of cancer, the CCP can always say, well, have you considered that asking too many questions is what causes cancer? You ever think of that? So we've got a situation where the patients don't know they have cancer, and the researchers don't know who has cancer. That's an excellent recipe for less treatment and more deaths. And it's not surprising that the data is hidden. Back in 2016, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his Healthy China 2030 initiative. And in 2023, officials announced that China aims to raise the overall five-year survival rate for cancers to over 46.6% by 2030, and improve detection. With pressure from the top to get results, wouldn't it be tempting to just, oh, I don't know, play around with the data to make China look good? I mean, just because that's what Chinese officials did when they boosted GDP numbers and decreased youth unemployment stats, and erased COVID death tolls to make itself look good, doesn't mean that when Chinese state-run media is talking about a drop in common cancer, that's the same thing happening. Hm, makes you wonder. Now to be complete, China isn't the only place where cancer is on the rise. The whole world is seeing a rise in new cancer cases thanks to longer lifespans, unhealthy sedentary lifestyles, better detection. But the CCP is making it harder for its own people to get better treatment. It prioritizes prestige and power over genuine solutions for health. In fact, it weaponizes biotech. With biology in its national strategy for military-civil fusion. I'm just going to put this image here for no reason at all. And that makes it harder for the US and other countries to justify doing medical collaboration with it. It's no wonder why the US denied Chinese scientists access to the world's largest cancer research databank just last year. So it comes right down to it, while cancer is a serious problem in China, the real problem is the societal cancer behind the scenes. The CCP. Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.