Xi Jinping Calls in Communist Leaders to Berate Them Out of Questioning Endless Lockdown Policy

Chinese leader Xi Jinping chaired a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday in which he appeared to warn members against questioning the Party’s draconian “zero tolerance” policy toward the Chinese coronavirus, which has seen Shanghai and Beijing endure punishing lockdowns in recent days, Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The meeting stressed the importance of unswervingly adhering to the dynamic zero-COVID [Chinese coronavirus] policy and resolutely fighting any attempts to distort, question or dismiss China’s anti-COVID [Chinese coronavirus] policy,” Xinhua, which is China’s official state-run press agency, reported on May 5.

The meeting was comprised specifically of “the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee [and] was chaired by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee,” according to Xinhua. Xi Jinping not only presided over the summit but also “delivered an important speech” during the assembly, indicating his voice provided the guiding thread for the meeting’s overarching message, as relayed by Xinhua.

An observer of China’s ruling Communist Party named David Bandurski, who also serves as a co-director of the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, argued that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Standing Committee used specific language during their May 5 meeting that “should be read as a direct criticism of unspecified local CCP leaders who have questioned the policies at the center, or who have been insufficiently successful in applying them.”

China’s ruling Communist Party ordered a city-wide lockdown of Shanghai on April 5 to contain the city’s latest epidemic of the Chinese coronavirus. The edict remained in place at press time on May 6, meaning all of Shanghai’s nearly 26 million residents have been confined to their homes for an entire month. Shanghai’s total lockdown followed a mandatory testing scheme for all of the city’s residents that saw one-half of Shanghai locked down for five days at a time from March 28 to April 5. Just as the testing measures were due to expire on April 5, Shanghai’s Communist Party-controlled government shocked the metropolis by issuing its total lockdown notice.

Shanghai’s extreme movement restrictions have especially upset the financial hub’s populace as they were imposed after Chinese state health authorities confirmed that the majority of Shanghai’s latest Chinese coronavirus caseload was asymptomatic.

“The broader lockdown came after testing saw asymptomatic COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] cases surge to more than 13,000. Symptomatic cases fell on Monday [April 4] to 268, from 425 the previous day,” Reuters observed on April 5.

Beijing, China’s national capital, has largely followed in Shanghai’s anti-epidemic footsteps since April 22, when its latest outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus began. Reuters reported on April 29 that Beijing had “closed more residential compounds,” indicating that the city’s Communist Party officials had already begun sealing off personal residences prior to that date. Beijing’s government — which is directly administered by China’s central government — had yet to announce a total lockdown of the city’s 21.3 million residents at press time on May 6, though it continued to tighten movement restrictions. Beijing, on May 4, indefinitely closed dozens of subway stations across the metropolis accounting for 12 percent of the city’s vast transit system.

“On Wednesday Beijing reported just 51 local infections, five of them asymptomatic,” Agence France-Presse reported of the city’s Chinese coronavirus caseload on May 4.