Week in China

1 Talking Point 6 Week in 60 Seconds 7 Economy 8 Internet and Tech Week in China 10 Healthcare 11 Banking and Finance 12 China and the World 15 China Tourist 16 China Consumer 14 February 2020 17 Society and Culture Issue 482 19 And Finally www.weekinchina.com 20 The Back Page Masked nation How is China’s government and economy coping with the spread of Exclusively the Wuhan virus? sponsored by Week in China Talking Point 14 February 2020 Dealing with disaster How is China coping with the coronavirus outbreak? Chinese President Xi Jinping on a community tour in Beijing this month he SARS outbreak nearly two plause and was taken as a sign of with a key post on the CPC’s Central Tdecades ago wasn’t simply a more accountable governance Committee.) public health crisis. For the Com - under new Party boss Hu Jintao, Nevertheless the CPC threw its munist Party of China (CPC) the epi - who took over in November 2002 as full political weight into averting demic presented a severe political the SARS virus started to spread in the 2003 crisis. Wang Qishan, now crisis that threatened its ruling le - southern China. China’s vice president after retiring gitimacy. More importantly it helped to as the anti-corruption tsar in 2017, In early 2003, amid mounting in - calm public anger, although Meng was parachuted in from Hainan, be - ternational concern and domestic would make a return to ministerial coming the new Beijing mayor. disquiet, the CPC sacked Meng rank five months later when he was Wang immediately put stringent Xuenong, who had only been ap - appointed to oversee a multi-billion quarantine controls in place. A new pointed as Beijing’s mayor three project to channel water from hospital was built in the Chinese months earlier. He was blamed for southern to northern China. (Later capital in just seven days. Timely failing to handle the way informa - he was named acting governor of updates of the situation were re - tion about the disease and its Shanxi province, but fired less than layed to the public, as well as the in - P h o spread was being reported to the a year later for mishandling deadly ternational community. The SARS t o : R e public. mudslides. Incredibly he made an - outbreak was soon brought under u t e r s Meng’s departure won loud ap - other comeback in 2010, this time control. 1 Week in China Talking Point 14 February 2020 How much of that sounds famil - iar? Since December last year an - other type of coronavirus has been wreaking havoc in China. In some ways the virus in question – named Covid-19 by the World Health Or - ganisation (WHO) this week – is pre - senting an even bigger threat. Has China learned from its previous ex - perience? The latest update Covid-19 has proved far more con - tagious than SARS. The latter in - fected more than 8,000 people worldwide, mainly in mainland China and Hong Kong, over an eight-month period. For Covid-19, the local govern - ment in Wuhan first announced 41 confirmed cases in late December yet by this morning the total had jumped to 64,627 across China. For - tunately the latest strain of virus has a lower fatality rate. But its more rapid spread means more in - Coronavirus patients being rushed into hospital fections. While SARS killed nearly 800 (or roughly one in 10 infected), day in a row as of Wednesday. the virus from spreading further. Covid-19 has led to over 1,486 That has healthcare specialists Since the beginning of this deaths so far (of which only three speculating that the outbreak could month, the number of recovered are outside mainland China), equat - be about to reach an inflection patients has outpaced the death toll ing with a death rate of about 2.3% point where the number of con - as well. As of today, almost 6,000 of those infected. firmed cases starts to drop – at least people had been discharged. This Hubei is at the epicentre of the outside Hubei. implies a recovery rate of close to pandemic. The province has re - A month ago many were warning 10% and compares with just 1.3% of ported over 1,426 deaths so far. The of a nightmarish scenario in which cases in late January. Healthcare of - Hubei government said on Thurs - the viral infection would spread un - ficials also predicted this week that day that 36,719 patients are still re - controllably as hundreds of mil - the proportion of discharged pa - ceiving treatment in hospital, and lions of people rushed home to tients might go higher thanks to “re - 1,685 of them are in critical condi - spend the Chinese New Year, which inforced measures” that combine tions. began on January 25. Western treatments with traditional Confirmed cases have been re - The Chinese government seems Chinese medicine. ported in other countries although to have succeeded in preventing the number of locally transmitted this from happening, thanks to a When will the crisis come to an infections is low. slew of unprecedented measures. end? That included the complete lock - “I hope this outbreak or this event Are there any positive signs? down of a dozen of the most popu - may be over in something like In an encouraging signal, experts lated cities in Hubei, including its April,” Zhong Nanshan, head of the from the WHO noted this week that capital Wuhan. The Spring Festival National Health Commission team the spread of the virus has not been holiday period was also extended tackling Covid-19, told Reuters in an P h o accelerating outside Hubei. In fact, for nearly a week (some local gov - interview this week. t o : R e the number of new infections out - ernments outside Hubei extended The epidemiologist won fame for u t e r s side the province fell for the eighth it even longer) in a bid to prevent combating the SARS epidemic and 3 Week in China Talking Point 14 February 2020 many Chinese put great store in the 83 year-old’s comments. Based on recent events, as well as forecasts, government action and AI-assisted data assessment, Zhong predicts that the number of con - firmed cases could peak in mid or late February, followed by a flatten - ing off in new infections, and then a gradual decline. But in a separate conference call with the Global Times this week, Zhong qualified his more optimistic tone with a warning that the situa - tion in Wuhan was still very chal - lenging. Indeed, on Thursday dramatically bigger numbers were released for newly confirmed cases of infection as Hubei changed its di - agnostic criteria (to be more in line with that used in the rest of the Zhong Nanshan: hopes new infections will peak this month country). The new method saw sus - pected patients added – i.e. those country like China. Various street- tor-General Tedros Adhanom Ghe - that were clinically diagnosed based level Party organisations (like the breyesus, after a two-day trip this on symptoms but who’d not yet one previously responsible for re - month, during which he was in - tested positive using lab kits – and porting breaches of the One-Child formed how the Chinese were con - this added 14,840 new cases on Policy) have also helped to make the structing two new hospitals in Wednesday alone. (This morning unprecedented quarantine more ef - Wuhan from scratch (see page 10). Hubei reported 4,823 new cases, a fective. So much so that Bloomberg Xi Jinping also gave a rallying cry fairly steep drop.) noted in a news article last week last month calling on all the Party that “China sacrifices a province committees inside companies and Is China’s political system well [Hubei] to save the world from coro - local governments to make “an all- placed to tackle the crisis? navirus”. out effort to tackle the outbreak The CPC’s political bosses have Such drastic action is made pos - based on the directions of the Party termed the fight against the out - sible by China’s so-called “nation - leadership”. break as “the people’s war”. Chinese wide system”. This designation No wonder then that private sec - President Xi Jinping, for one, has enables the central authorities to tor firms and business tycoons have started to make more public ap - get the wider machinery of govern - been rushing to offer support to cri - pearances, wearing a surgical mask. ment to work collectively on plans sis-stricken areas (see page 8). “The outbreak is a major test of or objectives, often with a massive China’s system and capacity for gov - dedication of manpower and other But weaknesses have been ex - ernance, and we must sum up the resources. A prior example of the posed too? experience and draw a lesson from ‘nationwide system’ kicking into The CPC’s leadership has also ad - it,” the seven-man Standing Com - high gear was the rescue and relief mitted to “shortcomings and defi - mittee of the Politburo said in a mission initiated after Sichuan ciencies” in the response to the statement last week. province was hit by a deadly earth - Covid-19 outbreak. A rare mea culpa One argument is that China’s po - quake in 2008. from the Politburo Standing Com - litical system is better suited to con - The result is an ability to concen - mittee this month acknowledged taining the spread of a viral disease. trate the country’s resources on that the country’s “emergency man - For instance, the complete lock- tackling major problems in times of agement system” needed to be im - P h o down of Wuhan, a logistics hub with crisis.

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