Coronavirus: Xi Jinping goes to Wuhan in sign tide has turned

China’s President Xi Jinping has visited Wuhan two months after he first gave orders on the COVID-19 crisis in January.

Xi Jinping, centre, visits the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing last week. Picture: AP

China’s President Xi Jinping has visited Wuhan — the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak — just over two months after he first gave orders on the health crisis in early January.

The highly choreographed trip by Mr Xi, who is also the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, reveals his government’s increased confidence that the coronavirus outbreak is under control in the world’s most populous country.

Bill Bishop, a longtime China watcher and author of the Sinocism newsletter, called Mr Xi’s trip to Wuhan an “unmistakable sign the party thinks victory really is at hand”.

The fast spreading coronavirus has upended Mr Xi’s plans for 2020, as more than 3000 Chinese citizens have been killed, the party’s 5.6 per cent “centennial” economic growth target looks terminal, the country’s biggest political event has been delayed and the President’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe postponed.

Mr Xi’s arrival on Tuesday came after China’s National Health Commission reported that for a third consecutive day there were no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases outside of Hubei, as outbreaks raged across Europe and the Middle East.

The Australian was told Wuhan residents in apartments overlooking Mr Xi’s route on Tuesday were told to keep away from their windows.

“Can I shout ‘thank you’ out of the window?” one resident asked a policeman watching over them.

“Better not,” answered the policeman.

The Chinese leader’s tightly managed visit to Hubei’s capital was foreshadowed over the weekend in Ming Pao daily, a Hong Kong paper with links to the CCP

Ming Pao reported that “candidates” selected for home visits during the trip had been carefully vetted by local officials “to ensure Xi’s absolute safety and the zero-risk of infection”.

It came after a bumbled attempt over the weekend to prepare the citizens of Wuhan for the leader’s trip, as the still quarantined city’s new party secretary Wang Zhonglin called for Wuhanese to “carry out gratitude education … so that they thank the general secretary, thank the Chinese Communist Party, heed the Party, walk with the Party, and create strong positive energy”.

The state media report of those comments was removed after an online backlash.

“If this is Wang Zhonglin’s idea, I think he needs to educate himself,” wrote Chinese journalist Chu Zhaoxin in a post that was soon deleted by China’s censors.

State media reports of the trip showed Mr Xi meeting medical workers, military officers and soldiers, community workers, police officers and other officials involved in what the President has called the “People’s War” against the coronavirus.

The leader’s itinerary included a visit to Huoshenshan Hospital, one of the “flat pack” hospitals whose hasty construction has featured prominently in China’s propaganda campaign about the central government’s response to the crisis.

China’s central government and its propaganda machine has been promoting the success of its quarantine measures, which the World Health Organisation has called “extraordinary”.

The WHO said the measures had sharply slowed the rate of spread of COVID-19, which was first detected in Wuhan in December, although they have also had tragic consequences.

Over the weekend, 10 people died after a hotel collapsed in Fujian, in China’s southeast. The local government had forced 58 people — including the 10 who died — to quarantine in the hotel for 14 days after travelling to the province.