By Li Muzi
A wave of posts on Chinese social media has drawn attention to what users describe as a sharp rise in sudden deaths linked to heart attacks, after several mainland bloggers claimed that millions may have died from cardiac events in 2025 and warned the situation could worsen this year.
The discussion gained traction after a short video circulated online posing a blunt question: “Have there really been so many people dying from heart attacks this year?” The clip quickly filled with comments from users recounting personal losses, many involving relatives and colleagues who died suddenly, often at a relatively young age.
In the comment section, one woman wrote that her husband died of a heart attack on Dec. 8, leaving no final words. He was 39. Another user said her husband died the previous month, also at age 39, leaving behind twin sons. Others described parents or family members who collapsed without warning and could not be saved despite emergency treatment.
On Jan. 5, a Douyin blogger using the name “Mu Chao Si” said in a video that heart attacks and strokes have become the leading causes of death, overtaking cancers that once dominated public concern. He claimed that about five million people died from heart attacks in 2025 and said the trend was increasingly affecting younger age groups.
“This is not something people can ignore anymore,” the blogger said, adding that three people he personally knew had died recently, all under the age of 50, all from heart attacks.
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In online discussions, many mainland users attributed the deaths to what they believe are long-term health effects following COVID-19 vaccination. Some commenters described immune system damage and cardiovascular stress, while others referred to spike proteins and post-infection complications. These claims reflect opinions expressed by users online and have not been independently verified.
Another Douyin creator, a 41-year-old woman who posts under the name “Li Jie Moves Forward,” said in a video last December that she had watched “too many people around me die.” She described opening her social media feed and seeing an obituary for a former colleague who reportedly died suddenly overnight.
Illness appears widespread
She said illness now seemed widespread among people her age and younger, and that death no longer felt distant or predictable. “It doesn’t wait for your children to grow up,” she said. “It doesn’t care whether your mortgage is paid off or whether your parents still need you.”
A netizen from Fujian province shared a similar account, saying that two young people from the same village had died in quick succession from heart attacks. One was 29 and had spoken to his mother the night before about breakfast plans. By morning, he was dead. Another, aged 31, collapsed at a subway station and could not be revived.
Publicly available data from 2024 show that China recorded about 1.3 million cases of acute myocardial infarction, accounting for roughly 15 percent of all coronary heart disease patients. Average annual deaths from cardiovascular disease have been estimated at around 1.6 million, with approximately 550,000 attributed to sudden cardiac arrest. By 2025, the number of people living with coronary heart disease in China had exceeded 11 million.
Despite these figures, the true scale of sudden deaths remains difficult to assess. Reports of unexplained or abrupt fatalities regularly circulate on Chinese social media, while official media coverage is limited. Large hospitals across the mainland continue to report heavy patient loads, and discussions of sudden death appear frequently online.
Given the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding control over public health information and its history of withholding or narrowing sensitive data, the actual number of sudden cardiac deaths may never be fully known.
