By Sean Cunningham, Columnist
Tianjin, China has had a chemical explosion that shook the world. There are videos all over the internet that show this disaster taking place.
China’s confirmed death toll is currently at 114 as of August 17th, 2015 with 70 still missing, 700+ injured, and 17,000 homes damaged after the blast and shock wave, it isn’t far-fetched to believe China is lying about the death toll. 
China has been censoring anything coming out of this. Sure Chinese explosion doesn’t sound so good on media reports if you’re trying to become a superpower on a world scale, but to actually resort to censorship means you have something to hide.
CNN reporters were escorted from the area, stopping
some important coverage of the aftermath. Seth Doane, a reporter for CBS, and his crew were prevented from filming the same day by policemen who put their hands over the lens of his camera, also creating more fuel to a cover-up theory. “We’re not trying to do that much, but as you can see, the police here are trying to stop us from shooting,” Doane says. “This is what it’s like covering a story here in China.”
Chinese authorities were even clamping down on small time websites and Chinese citizens using social media to comment on the situation in Tianjin. On large social media and blogging sites such as Weibo, posts pertaining to the blast with keywords like explosion and Tianjin were censored.
The Cyberspace Administration of China also handled it in a very poor way, by banning all journalists from social media after the event, creating even more suspicion to the blast. The Administration also permanently shut down eighteen websites and suspended 32 more for reporting on this incident, with the Cyberspace Administration of China saying that they were “inciting panic.” With Chinese censorship going on after the incident it makes it just that more suspicious.
In the past, China has covered-up arguably worse things. An example is China’s SARS epidemic back in 2002-2003. Knowing that they will hide important health information from from their own people what makes you think they are just as easy covering up the real death toll numbers to an explosion that could make the country look bad?
China isn’t exactly out there to give us all the right information, the death toll is probably higher than admitted but China won’t admit to that.
