Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday honored the “heroes” of China’s “people’s war” against COVID-19 at a ceremony, lauding the country’s resilience as well as the decisive role played in containment efforts by the Chinese Communist Party.
Defying charges from the US and elsewhere that early failures enabled the COVID-19 pandemic to spread more quickly, Xi said that China acted in an open and transparent manner throughout, and took decisive actions that saved lives.
“China has helped save the lives of tens of millions of people around the world with its practical actions, showing China’s sincere desire to build a common future and community for humanity,” Xi said at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Photo: AFP
“We have passed an extraordinary and historic test,” Xi said, praising the country for a “heroic struggle” against the disease.
“We quickly achieved initial success in the people’s war against the coronavirus... We are leading the world in economic recovery and in the fight against COVID-19,” he said.
Xi awarded Zhong Nanshan (鐘南山), the senior medical adviser and coronavirus expert who helped shape China’s COVID-19 response, with a Medal of the Republic, the country’s highest honor, while three others were given the honorary title of “The People’s Hero”: Chen Wei (陳薇), People’s Liberation Army general and biochemical expert; Zhang Dingyu (張定宇), head of Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital; and Zhang Boli (張伯禮) a 72-year-old expert in traditional Chinese medicine.
There was no mention of Li Wenliang (李文亮), the doctor who was punished for spreading information about a new infectious disease in Wuhan, and whose death from COVID-19 in February sparked a nationwide outrage.
Xinhua news agency said in a long special report that Xi has worked tirelessly since January and even suffered sleepless nights as he “shouldered the extremely difficult mission of fighting the epidemic.”
Beijing has sought to focus on China’s success at overcoming the virus, rather than its origins.
During a government-arranged tour of Wuhan last week, reporters were shown schools and tourist sites reopening, but were not allowed to report from Huanan Seafood City market where the outbreak was first believed to have originated.
“The shifting narrative is aided by the government’s success in containing the spread, and it has been quite successful at home, though internationally it isn’t as successful as it would hope,” said Huang Yanzhong (黃嚴忠), senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank.
The upbeat mood in Beijing comes as concerns grow about a resurgence of COVID-19 across Europe, with France tightening restrictions, cases in Britain spiking and schools resuming around the region in the past few days.
Worldwide infections to date now stand at more than 27 million and more than 890,000 people have died from the disease, with the pandemic showing no sign of peaking.
Spain on Monday became the first country in Western Europe to pass half a million infections. The nation had largely gained control over its outbreak, but cases have surged since restrictions were removed at the end of June.
In Morocco, the government shut all schools and imposed a lockdown on Casablanca on the day classes were supposed to resume after cases surged in the city.
Restrictions have also been reimposed in France, where seven more regions were placed on a red list after successively recording daily infection rates of between 7,000 and 9,000.
In England, officials changed overseas quarantine rules again, imposing curbs on travelers from seven Greek islands popular with holidaymakers, after Britain at the weekend registered a level of infection not seen since late May.
Additional reporting by AFP
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