Coronavirus outbreak casts shadow over China’s top political meetings

The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is casting a shadow over plans for the annual gatherings of China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and its top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which had been expected to take place in early March.

Cases of the illness have been confirmed in almost all corners of the country, with the death toll from the disease surpassing 100 on Tuesday.

The province of Yunnan cited the spread of the virus as the reason it was postponing its annual legislative gatherings. Sichuan province has also postponed its meetings but gave no reason. A handful of municipal governments have done the same.

With fewer than 100 confirmed cases each as of Monday, Sichuan and Yunnan are not among the provinces hardest hit by the outbreak.

But their decision came after an ad hoc official committee to handle the epidemic, led by Premier Li Keqiang, issued a nationwide order on Saturday to delay or cancel all meetings and public events.

All tiers of government, beginning at the district level, hold legislative and political consultative sessions once a year, culminating in the “two sessions” of the NPC and CPPCC in Beijing.

Gu Su, a political scientist with Nanjing University, said the central government should also consider postponing the two sessions in March.

“Almost all small-scale meetings have been stopped across the country following the committee’s directive,” Gu said.

“I do think they should start considering postponing the two sessions.”

While the meeting was still a month away, the coronavirus should be treated with extra caution considering its incubation period of up to two weeks, he added.

The sessions, if held on time in March, will see more than 5,000 delegates and political advisers and their aides gather in the capital from all parts of the country.

The sessions, usually two weeks long, will also be attended by all the top officials including President Xi Jinping himself, as well as top executives of state enterprises, generals, and regional chiefs.

More than 100 would be joining from Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak.

While these meetings usually do little but endorse decisions made by senior state leaders, they carry symbolic significance in showing the country’s unity and preaching the success of the Communist Party’s policies.

Among the more important functions of such meetings are endorsing the annual working report of the central government, where Beijing will announce its annual economic growth target, national budgets and annual policy priorities.

Gu said there were no urgent tasks such as a government reshuffle for this year’s two sessions.

“The sessions this year won’t need to endorse new government appointments like it does once every five years,” he said.

“It’s only a normal and regular annual meeting.”

Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s top communicable diseases specialists, told China’s official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday that the spread of the disease had yet to reach its peak, which might come “within a week or 10 days”.

The outbreak comes 17 years after another coronavirus, Sars, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, swept around the world, killing more than 700 people.