China Triumphant One Year After Wuhan Lockdown

Wuhan, China, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jan, 2021 ) :"People Supremacy, Life Supremacy" reads the sign at a Wuhan exhibition, where visitors are greeted by a paean to China's triumph over the pandemic and the agility of its communist leadership in a crisis.

Saturday marks one year since the start of a 76-day lockdown of Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected before sweeping across the world and killing more than two million people.

With China's official death toll from the virus under 5,000, Beijing is on a prolonged victory lap to promote its narrative of how it contained Covid-19, engineered vaccines and rebooted its economy.

China this week reported 2.3 percent GDP growth in 2020 - the slowest in decades but still the only major economy to post positive figures during the pandemic.

As the official data was released, state media trumpeted the "resilience and vitality" of China's economy.

In Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, scenes of relaxation, travel freedoms and safety this week contrast with the rolling lockdowns, surging death rates and overwhelmed health services in many other parts of the world.

Wuhan's wet markets throng with shoppers, elderly dancers rehearse in the parks, and bars sell "Wuhan Stay Strong" craft beer.

At the Wuhan exhibition hall, China's virus story gets an extravagant retelling.

Visitors are transported back to early last year, when tributes flowed to the medics, army and authorities who were battling the virus at its ground zero.

Rooms are bedecked in communist flags and party messages as videos celebrate health workers and the makeshift hospitals erected in record time.

President Xi Jinping presides benevolently over the hall from life-sized photos, unmistakably the marshall of the virus response.

Many in Wuhan stick closely to the official story, especially with a team of experts from the World Health Organization poised to begin fieldwork to establish the virus' origins.

"Wuhan had a tough year in 2020," Wang Chen, a 20-year-old resident, told AFP outside the exhibition, adding that China "handled the crisis very well." Stung by international criticism of cover-ups and bungling in the early weeks of the outbreak, China for months blocked the WHO team from visiting.

Beijing is embracing their much-delayed trip as a chance to embellish its storyline.

"It's time to prove Wuhan's innocence," Wang said, in echoes of official narratives that have sought to lay the blame for the virus in other countries.