How Chinese celebrity deaths expose its big lie about COVID toll They say China is undercounting and excluding deaths to protect its political and social system.To get more chinese entertainment news, you can visit shine news official website. Though China continues to retain an iron grip on the press and social media, a string of celebrity deaths is exposing the official narrative. As per BBC, the death of opera singer Chu Lanlan last month caused a stir given her age.While the family of the 40-year-old did not give specifics on her death, they described her passing as an ‘abrupt departure’. Another death that hit the headlines was of actor Gong Jintang.The 83-year-old was famed for his role as ‘Father Kang’ on China’s longest-running TV show, as per BBC.Please god, please treat the elderly better,” Gong’s co-star Hu Yanfen wrote on Weibo. “R.I.P Father Kang. This wave have really claimed many elders’ lives, let’s make sure we protect the elderly in our families,” another Weibo user said. As per The Guardian, 84-year-old screenwriter Ni Zhen, known for his work on the 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern passed away last month. A retired professor of Nanjing University, Hu was the main author of a 1987 piece which marks the start of China’s ‘Boluan Fanzheng’ period – a return to normal after the Cultural Revolution, as per BBC.Wang Jingguang, who directed the 2013 movie Never Come Back, passed away at 54 last month. As per The Telegraph UK, some Chines media outlets have attributed high-profile deaths to ‘severe colds’.Like Wu Guanying, a professor at China’s Tsinghua University, who passed away at age 67 in December. The Telegraph UK quoted state media as noting that 16 scientists from China’s top science and engineering schools had died between 21 and 26 December. The string of high-profile deaths has led some on social media to question the state narrative. “Science is only one field, there are people from many other fields who have died too, not to mention more ordinary elderly people who have no voice,” a user wrote on Weibo. “Whether it is academicians or celebrities … or my relatives and friends in close contact, I really feel many people have died, but experts keep saying that was not the case,” one said Another added,: “I beg those adults who can’t see the ants on the ground to see how many people have passed away due to Covid. Just how many people who have great contributions to the country have died? And these were all celebrities.” The Guardian quoted Haishang Yilanghua a Chinese influencer with 364,000 followers as writing on Weibo, “Many public figures have died, with many of them passing at a young age. These deaths were made public, but there were still many other ordinary people who suffered and died that was not posted online.”