First it was Wuhan. Then cities like Tianjin, Putian, Xiamen, Dalian, Xian, Jilin or Shanghai. And now the capital, Beijing. Like those fairground attractions in which moles that arise haphazardly are hit with a hammer, Chinese Vice President Sun Chunlan, in charge of controlling the pandemic in China, makes an appearance every time the coronavirus escapes control. from a local authority.
A staunch defender of the zero tolerance policy, her arrival heralds strict confinements, dismissals of officials and calls for extreme measures against the pathogen.
The task, titanic and endless, catches him in the twilight of his working life, at the age of 72 and about to retire after the congress that the Communist Party of China (PCCh) will hold in the fall. Even so, the only woman among the 25 members of the politburo, the penultimate organ of power of the CCP, does not lack spirit.
This was demonstrated during the hundred days he spent in Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic, where he made sure that all the positives were isolated and the confinement was complied with despite the unknowns about the virus and the lack of the shield that they now provide. the vaccines. “This is not a game of hide and seek, the policy must be implemented without exceptions”, he was seen demanding a raised fist in a meeting with local officials. Her role earned her numerous praises in the state press, but they did not deprive her of having to deal with some controversy, such as when she visited a gated community and some residents yelled at her "It's all a lie!" she from her house as a complaint for having received packages with groceries just a little before her arrival.
Sun, second of the four deputy prime ministers of the State Council (the Chinese Executive), assumed health responsibilities in 2018. One of her first official acts was to inaugurate the National Health Commission, the body that now reports on the evolution of the pandemic. She has not hesitated to support President Xi Jinping's strategy, which emphasizes the priority of saving lives despite the high social and economic cost of his measures.
His schedule in recent months has been hectic. In Xian, he reprimanded local officials after an eight-month-pregnant woman lost her baby after being denied admission to hospital for failing to present an updated negative test. "I am deeply ashamed," she said. Arriving in Shanghai, the metropolis of 25 million inhabitants confined for two months, she buried any experiment in coexistence with the virus and demanded "quick and decisive" actions to contain the crisis caused by the omicron variant.
His attitude has not changed in Beijing, where this week he visited the epicenter bar area of the latest outbreak and urged its prompt control so that it does not interfere with the CCP congress in the fall.
Unlike Xi, the son of a revolutionary close to Mao Zedong, Sun was born into a family with no connections to power. A native of the northern province of Hebei, near Beijing, he worked for years in a watch factory while climbing the ranks in the CCP. In 2009 she was appointed party chief in Fujian province, and in 2012 she was transferred to Tianjin, a large port city near the capital. That year she also became one of only eight women to join the politburo since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
But its success does not hide the reality of women in high Chinese politics, where their presence is testimonial: barely 5% in the Central Committee and none in the entire history of the Permanent Committee, the highest power body. According to analysts, teammates with a less remarkable record than Sun's have entered this select club. "The system has been extremely unfair to her," expert on the Chinese elite Victor Shih summed up for Bloomberg.
This invisibility among the elites contrasts with the relevance of women during pandemics. The previous SARS crisis, the worst epidemic experienced in Asia before covid, was managed by "the iron lady" Wu Yi, Sun's predecessor. It was a doctor, Zhang Jixian, who warned in Wuhan that some mysterious cases of atypical pneumonia could be due to a new pathogen; and it was an epidemiologist and general of the Chinese army, Chen Wei, who was one of the first to land in the city to develop a faster and more accurate detection kit.
