SinoInsight 1
On March 10, Xi Jinping traveled to Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 coronavirus. According to state media reports, Xi was accompanied by Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, PRC vice premier Sun Chunlan, CCP General Office director Ding Xuexiang, and Central Military Commission vice chair Zhang Youxia. Premier Li Keqiang, who heads the leading small group overseeing epidemic prevention and control work, was not part of Xi’s entourage.
In Wuhan, Xi inspected the Donghu New Town community and Huoshenshan Hospital’s epidemic command center. From state media photos, Xi kept his distance (about 12 feet) when meeting with military troops, representatives of medical staff dispatched to Wuhan from outside Hubei Province, and community government officials. Xi communicated with coronavirus patients and medical staff serving them via video conferencing.
According to information being circulated on Chinese social media, large numbers of police were stationed outside the residential apartments in Wuhan that Xi Jinping was going to pass by. Police also took up positions at apartment balconies (reportedly two officers per household) to prevent a repeat of the incident where residents yelled at Sun Chunlan.
There was also some controversy over Xi’s visit to Huoshenshan Hospital, an emergency specialty field hospital that was newly constructed to handle the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. With state media reporting that Xi had visited Huoshenshan Hospital’s epidemic command center, the impression given is that the Party “core” leader was risking himself by inspecting a dangerous epidemic site. However, not mentioned in reports of Xi’s Wuhan trip is the fact that Huoshenshan Hospital’s epidemic command center is located in Wuhan Workers’ Sanatorium, which is hundreds of meters away from Huoshenshan Hospital. Aside from housing Huoshenshan Hospital’s epidemic command center, the sanatorium has no relation with the hospital, which is run by the CMC’s Joint Military Support Force.
OUR TAKE
1. The CCP’s political legitimacy rests on its ability to deliver economic results. Recently released official PRC economic data and statements from international companies about expecting sharp declines in first-quarter sales indicate that the CCP cannot afford to keep China in lockdown or have the cloud of the epidemic linger on without seriously threatening regime survival.
Xi Jinping’s Wuhan trip is meant to assuage the Chinese people and convince the international community that the CCP has “turned the tides” in the coronavirus battle so that people will be less hesitant about returning to work, international companies will reconsider immediately shifting supply chains, and foreign investment will continue to flow into China.
Xi’s Wuhan trip is part of a larger CCP propaganda and disinformation strategy to shift the global narrative on the coronavirus (for deeper analysis, see our article below). To spin calamity into victory, the CCP is trying to change the perception that the coronavirus started spreading in China and that the PRC is responsible for the severity of the outbreak to the view that the epidemic originated elsewhere and the CCP, having successfully “curbed” the coronavirus, is now going to save the world. SinoInsider subscribers, however, will have learned from our recent research that the CCP does not have the epidemic situation under control. Local governments and companies are also erring on the side of safety by faking the normal resumption of production.
It is worth noting that the World Health Organization only declared a pandemic a day after Xi visited Wuhan even though there were signs of a pandemic much earlier. The optics of the WHO’s move and the CCP’s “world savior” propaganda are pernicious—the CCP can now claim that China is “safe” from the epidemic while the rest of the world have become “epidemic zones,” further deflect responsibility for its behavior that led to the outbreak, and leverage on the situation to coerce other countries to cooperate with the PRC or see reduced exports of masks and other medical supplies. A March 10 Weibo post by Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin reflects the CCP’s sense of schadenfreude: “First, it is unexpected that a SARS scenario would repeat in Wuhan. Second, it is unexpected that China could manage the epidemic through national mobilization. Third, it is unexpected that the epidemic would spread around the world with such intensity, and Western countries would get infected and fall, one after the other.”
In an emergency warning released on Jan. 24, we wrote: “If the CCP feels that it cannot cope with regime-threatening risks, it cannot be ruled out that the CCP could find ways to ‘weaponize’ the Wuhan virus by engineering its spread to many countries; from the CCP’s perspective, when other countries are distracted with an epidemic, then there will be less international pressure on the PRC and the regime’s internal problems.”
2. We previously analyzed how the CCP could turn a pandemic to its advantage. The global panic that has transpired following the rise of coronavirus cases worldwide and the CCP’s success in shaping the coronavirus narrative would have further strengthened Xi Jinping’s hand in dealing with his political rivals and granted him additional political bargaining chips to maintain the tenuous “consensus” in the Party elite and prolong the pause in the “perish together” factional struggle. Xi likely saw an opportunity to further consolidate his political gains by visiting Wuhan at this time to demonstrate “victory” over the coronavirus; whether or not the epidemic has indeed been contained is secondary to making an important political gesture that gives the appearance of “victory.”
3. People can be “politically correct,” but the concept of “political correctness” does not apply to coronaviruses and other infectious diseases. Put another way, the CCP cannot simply “disappear” COVID-19 or other deadly diseases by “curbing” the narrative on the epidemic. Businesses, investors, and governments must treat the CCP’s official data on the coronavirus with extreme skepticism and step up efforts to expose and counter the CCP’s propaganda and disinformation on the epidemic. There is a fine line between truly curbing a pandemic and aiding the CCP in its massive cover-up project.
The dangers of believing CCP propaganda cannot be underestimated. Trusting the PRC authorities could lead to a relaxation of guidelines on traveling to China and global negligence, which in turn could lead to a bigger and even deadlier second outbreak on the mainland. The resulting pandemic from the second outbreak would be more severe than the current pandemic.
SinoInsight 2
On March 12, Mi Feng, a spokesman with the PRC’s National Health Commission and deputy director of the commission’s propaganda department, said at a PRC State Council press conference on epidemic prevention and control that the “peak of the epidemic has passed for China” and that the “increase of new cases is falling.”
On the same day, the CCP General Office and the State Council General Office jointly issued a notice on organizing investigations into the resumption of work and production. According to the notice, 29 investigation groups will be dispatched to some provinces, regions, cities, and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in mid-March to check if work and production had been resumed.
OUR TAKE
1. The PRC’s claim that the “peak of the epidemic has passed for China” does not stack with activity and sentiments on the ground. We look at some examples from Chinese social media and reporting from overseas media outlets:
On March 6, news that Foxconn’s Shenzhen and Zhengzhou factories saw confirmed cases of the coronavirus after employees went back to work was circulated on the Chinese internet. However, official media did not report this development.
On March 8, overseas Chinese language broadcaster Sound of Hope reported that the Shanghai authorities had quietly set up a temporary cabin hospital (方艙醫院) in Shanghai’s Hongkou Football Stadium.
On March 9, overseas Chinese language media Dajiyuan published an interview article where Wuhan residents reported several large-scale coronavirus outbreaks in Wuhan’s Hanyang District. The residents said that the outbreaks could be traced to a coronavirus patient who suffered a relapse after being discharged from the hospital.
Multiple recent videos circulating on Chinese social media show overcrowded hospitals in Shanghai and Chongqing with lines stretching hundreds of meters along the road outside the hospitals. From the videos, the people were queuing up in close proximity to each other instead of observing a safe distance.
- On March 2, queues outside the Changhai Hospital of Shanghai were seen stretching over half a kilometer, according to video footage.
- On March 10, video footage showed that the emergency room at the Wuhan Asia Heart Hospital was so overcrowded that patients arriving on ambulances were unable to receive treatment.
- On March 11, the Chongqing municipal government suddenly shifted its public health response from Level I, the highest of four levels, to Level II. Hospitals also resumed full-day outpatient services. After the shift, several videos circulating on Chinese social media showed lines stretching hundreds of meters long outside several hospitals in Chongqing.
2. The central government’s move to send inspection groups to the localities to check on whether work and production have been resumed shows that it is aware that local governments are unwilling to encourage people to return to work. Local officials would have a better grasp of the epidemic situation in their area, and their hesitancy in complying with the central government’s instructions could be due to their assessing that epidemic risks have not truly subsided contrary to what the central government claims.
Local officials likely believe that the central government will not allow local governments to suffer fiscal collapse to preserve political stability in the regime. Thus, they will almost certainly look to “wipe the slate” and blame all past economic and debt problems on the epidemic. From the standpoint of local officials, it is far more hazardous to their careers to push people back to work and risk a worsening of the epidemic situation in their locality than to properly implement “return the people to work” orders from the central government
For the central government, the inertia of local governments toward resuming economic activity poses an existential threat to the CCP regime. Low or no production will lead to widespread business failure, rapidly rising unemployment, and an acceleration in the withdrawal of foreign capital from China.
