Wuhan, which was declared closed on January 23, 2020 due to the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak, has officially changed its mayor on the eve of the anniversary of the closure, with Cheng Yongwen, director of the Hubei Development and Reform Commission, as its vice mayor and acting mayor. Zhou Xianwang, who “dumped” the mayor during last year’s outbreak, has been reassigned as a member of the CPC Hubei CPPCC party group.
The website of the Wuhan Municipal People’s Congress of Hubei Province released news that on January 22, 2021, the thirty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th Wuhan Municipal People’s Congress voted to accept Zhou Xianwang’s request to no longer serve as the mayor of Wuhan and appointed Cheng Yongwen as the vice mayor and acting mayor of Wuhan.
Earlier, according to the official media “Hubei Daily” reported that on the morning of January 20, the CPC Hubei Provincial CPPCC Party Secretary Huang Chuping presided over an expanded meeting of the provincial CPPCC Party group, Zhou Xianwang attended the meeting as a member of the Hubei Provincial CPPCC Party group.
The city of Wuhan was officially declared “closed” on January 23, 2020.
On January 27, 2020, CCTV News, the official media of the Chinese Communist Party, broadcasted an interview with Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang. In the interview, Zhou admitted that information on the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak was not released in a timely manner. He said, “The disclosure is not timely, which we should understand, because it is an infectious disease, and infectious diseases have the law on the prevention and control of infectious diseases, which must be disclosed according to the law. As a local government, after I get this information, after authorization, I can disclose it, so this was a lot of incomprehension at the Time.”
For Wuhan to take the Epidemic prevention measures, Zhou Xianwang also admitted to a city with a population of more than 10 million people to take measures to close the city, which is unprecedented in the history of human urban development. He said that as long as it is conducive to controlling the pneumonia epidemic in Wuhan, he is willing to take responsibility, and that both Ma Guoqiang, the secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, and he are willing to “dismiss from their posts to thank the world”.
Before Zhou’s interview, Wuhan police dealt with eight people for spreading rumors about the epidemic on the Internet. The Chinese Communist Party officially claimed that the epidemic was “preventable and controllable” and that there were no new cases.
BBC News reported on January 28, 2020 that Ding Xueliang, an academic member of the Hong Kong-based Boyuan Foundation and a public policy expert who has studied China’s emergency response system during the SARS era, said in an interview that Zhou Xianwang’s comments in an interview with the official media CCTV were “unusual” among CCP officials, and that it was clear that the conflict between Zhongnanhai and the local authorities over the handling of the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic had been resolved. It is clear that the conflict between Zhongnanhai and the local community has been “semi-open” in terms of the handling of the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic. In this regard, Zhou Xianwang probably got the clear message that he is mainly responsible for the serious epidemic in Wuhan.
According to Ding Xueliang, the criticism of Wuhan for “under-reporting” the epidemic is not the same thing as the “under-reporting” that the CPC Central Committee wants to investigate. If they were to be held responsible for the out-of-control epidemic, the Beijing authorities would look at whether the Wuhan administration, led by Zhou Xianwang, reported internal information to the central government in a timely manner, rather than how the epidemic was publicly released.
Taiwan‘s Central News Agency reported that on January 20, Zhou Xianwang attended an expanded meeting of the provincial CPPCC party in his capacity as a member of the party group of the CPPCC of Hubei Province. Under the CCP system, the CPPCC is a cross-party deliberative and consultative organization with no real power, and Zhou Xianwang, who has not yet reached retirement age, was transferred to the CPPCC this year, showing signs of moving to an “idle position.
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