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Xi Jinping visits epicentre Wuhan; sign that China believes coronavirus outbreak has turned a corner
Xi’s visit to Wuhan, a city under a lockdown since January 23, is a sign of the highest confidence within the Communist Party of China (CPC)-ruled government that the epidemic has turned a corner in China.
A mask-wearing President Xi Jinping on Tuesday visited Wuhan, the city at the centre of the coronavirus epidemic, for the first time since the start of the outbreak as national health authorities continued to report a dramatic fall in new cases of covid-19 in China.
Xi’s visit to Wuhan, a city under a lockdown since January 23, is a sign of the highest confidence within the Communist Party of China (CPC)-ruled government that the epidemic has turned a corner in China.
Until this visit, Xi’s second-in-command, Premier Li Keqiang was the senior-most Chinese leader to have visited Wuhan in late January as the outbreak raged in the city and the province of Hubei.
On Tuesday, Chinese state media reported on the President first visiting a hospital built in nine days to make space for an overwhelming number of patients, meeting frontline doctors and nurses, volunteers and residents in Wuhan.
State media showed Xi speaking via video-link to frontline medics and patients at one of the field hospitals set up in the city, an agency report said.
The Chinese President’s visit is also a message to the world that the Chinese way of controlling the epidemic – locking down hundreds of millions in their homes and putting in place severe restrictions on travel – has worked despite criticisms and concerns.
The state media’s coverage of the China’s epidemic control has glossed over ample evidence to show that neither local nor central authorities had acted despite their knowledge about the spreading coronavirus weeks before the lockdowns in the worst-hit Hubei province were put in place.
Xi’s visit to Wuhan will also likely add layers to the Chinese state’s narrative obfuscating the delay and negligence; and aggressively promote instead the tale of how China is winning the “people’s war” against the virus, which, of course, will be no mean feat as the rest of world suddenly grapples with the pathogen.
Xi’s Tuesday visit coincided with a new low in fresh coronavirus cases in China: In the last 24 hours, it was only 19, down from several hundred cases just weeks earlier.
As of Tuesday, there have been 80,754 cases of the virus confirmed across China, 67,760 of which were in Hubei, the province of which Wuhan is the capital. Of the 3,136 deaths confirmed in China, all but 112 have been in Hubei.
Official news agency, Xinhua, reported that Xi arrived in Wuhan on Tuesday
“…for an inspection of the epidemic prevention and control work”.
Xi, according to Xinhua, “will visit and express regards to medical workers, military officers and soldiers, community workers, police officers, officials and volunteers who have been fighting the epidemic on the front line, as well as patients and residents during the inspection.”
It was more than a month ago that the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who died from the covid-19 illness in February, sparked a wave of grief and anger online. Li
was among a group of people who had raised the alarm as early as late December but was harassed and detained by the Wuhan police for doing so.
A visit by vice premier Sun Chunlan to a Wuhan residential community last week was met with angry public heckling, showing how easily state propaganda efforts could backfire, the news agency AFP reported.
