Purges of officials in China for their “poor response” to outbreaks

Beijing, 22 Mar More than 70 Chinese officials were dismissed or received disciplinary punishment in recent weeks for their inability to prevent the spread of covid during the current resurgence of cases facing the country, local press reports today. China, which is pursuing a severe “zero tolerance” policy towards the coronavirus, is experiencing a wave of infections attributed to the omicron variant that is causing record positive figures - more than 20,000 since the beginning of the month - not seen since the start of the pandemic in the first half of 2020. The increase in asymptomatic cases has complicated prevention efforts to detect new infections in time, as happened in previous waves, which has not prevented senior government officials from warning that officials who do not do “everything possible” to stop the transmission of the virus will be punished. According to the South China Morining Post (SCMP) newspaper, at least 74 officials have been fired or reprimanded for their “poor response” to the last wave. There are up to 14 from the same province, Canton, due to their inability to control the outbreak that broke out in the city of Shenzhen, confined for a week: “Disciplinary offices are very attentive to the performance of provincial officials during this outbreak. Those who fail in their tasks can forget about a promotion,” says a source quoted by that newspaper this Tuesday. The punishments also affect important positions in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as happened in Jilin province - it has thousands of cases a day in recent days - where the mayor of the homonymous city and the head of the health commission of Changchun, the capital of that region, were dismissed. Last Thursday, Chinese President and General Secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, ordered during a meeting of the Politburo - the highest body of power in training - that officials should persist in the country's zero-case policy and to eliminate the chains of transmission of the virus “as soon as possible.” “Our response to covid demonstrated our strength and our ability to control the epidemic. He showed the advantages of the socialist system (...) Victory comes from perseverance,” concluded the communist leader. China's strict strategy involves border closures, lockdowns and massive PCR testing wherever cases are detected. However, officials now have the difficult task of preventing outbreaks but also of not putting in place “excessive restrictions” that would bring the economy to a standstill. Experts cited by SCMP say that the punishments of recent weeks mostly reach those who have failed “miserably”, as in the case of those dismissed in Jilin, and that the rest only receive “reprimands that have no long-term consequences”. Since the pandemic began, the Chinese government has fired or reprimanded more than 1,000 officials for what it considers a poor performance in containing covid, according to the newspaper. According to the accounts of the Chinese National Health Commission, since the beginning of the pandemic, 134,564 people were infected in the country and 4,638 died, two of them last week being the first deaths recorded in more than a year. The total number of active infected persons in mainland China now stands at 23,138, 42 of them in serious condition. CHIEF jco/vec/pi