Virus-hit China set to postpone parliament for first time in decades as death toll touches 2500

BEIJING: China is expected to decide Monday whether to postpone its annual parliament session for the first time since the Cultural Revolution as the country battles the coronavirus outbreak.

Top Communist Party leaders including President Xi Jinping attend each year´s gathering of the National People´s Congress, which rubber-stamps bills, budgets and personnel moves already decided by the party.

But much of China has ground to a halt in the battle against an outbreak that has infected nearly 80,000 people and claimed more than 2,500 lives. Many top officials who would normally attend the meeting are consumed with tackling the virus in their home regions.

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And Beijing has imposed quarantine measures on those arriving from other parts of China, a practical challenge for a gathering of nearly 3,000 delegates. Then there are the bad optics of China´s leaders arriving in face masks for a meeting that is highly stage-managed to present the image of a Communist Party in perfect control of the country.

The NPC´s Standing Committee meets on Monday to discuss whether to delay the session, which was due to start on March 5. Ling Li, a lecturer on Chinese politics at the University of Vienna, said postponement was "very likely".

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"If the situation is not significantly improved by Monday, then a decision not to postpone the NPC conference would be unreasonable and signal a desperate effort of the authorities to keep up the appearance of political normality, which is not there," she said.

Rubber stamp

The gathering is used to portray the government as answerable to the people´s representatives, but its deliberations are pre-determined well in advance and the whole event is tightly choreographed by the Communist Party.

Nevertheless, it generates global interest as a glimpse into China´s political and economic policy priorities for the coming year. Despite its highly choreographed nature, the NPC meeting can still herald important changes.

The 2018 session approved the removal of presidential term limits -- handing Xi a potentially lifelong tenure. With Mao Zedong as the meeting´s chair, the NPC first convened in September 1954 in Beijing, where delegates passed the new constitution of the People´s Republic of China, five years after its founding.

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The legislature met almost every year after that for the next decade, but paused during the decade of political turmoil ushered in by Mao´s Cultural Revolution. It re-convened in 1978, two years after Mao´s death.

Since 1985, it has been held each March -- and on March 5 specifically for the last two decades. But everyday life has been paralysed by the virus and unprecedented measures to contain it, including the lockdown of tens of millions of people at the epicentre in central Hubei province.

Zang Tiewei, a spokesman for the legislative affairs commission of the NPC Standing Committee, told state-controlled news agency Xinhua that delaying the yearly political event was "necessary" to ensure "attention is focused on the prevention and control of the epidemic."

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Dorothy Solinger, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of California at Irvine, said it would be a "smart move to postpone." "Look at the message that sends," she said. "We (the government) are putting all our effort into combatting the virus. We don´t have the time to hold these meetings now."

The virus also deeply impacts some of the session´s most hallowed rituals, she said. "How could they present the mandatory NPC upbeat accounts of the progress and positive prognosis of the economy and other achievements in the midst of such uncertainty as they´re facing now?"

China reports 150 more virus deaths

China´s death toll from the new coronavirus rose to 2,592 on Monday, after the National Health Commission reported 150 more fatalities, all but one in the epicentre of Hubei province.

Monday´s death toll was a jump on the 97 deaths reported Sunday. The commission also confirmed a total of 409 new cases in China, with all but 11 in Hubei. Multiple provinces have reported zero new infections for several days in a row, even as the situation continues to worsen within Hubei and outside of China.

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Only one death was reported outside of Hubei on Monday, in Hainan province, where the official Xinhua news agency said a 55-year-old doctor had died. The coronavirus has spread to more than 25 countries and is causing mounting alarm due to new pockets of outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Italy reported a third death while cases spiked, and authorities suspended football games while the Venice Carnival was cut short. Iran´s confirmed death toll rose to eight, prompting travel bans from neighbouring countries.

China´s numbers of daily new infections are well down from the outbreak´s early height. But the country´s authorities have sowed confusion about the data by repeatedly changing their counting methods.