China’s rulers see the coronavirus as a chance to tighten their grip

ASKED TO CRAFT a metaphor for all that the world admires and fears about modern China, a novelist could hardly improve on the coronavirus hospitals now rising, at fantastic speeds, in disease-stricken cities. Start with admiration. These construction sites are a fine example of decisive Communist Party action. Work had been under way for two days when Chaguan visited the Second People’s Hospital in Changde, a city in the central province of Hunan, 400km from the epidemic’s suspected birthplace in Wuhan. Half a dozen excavators roared and pawed at the rust-red ground. A road-roller flattened a gravel pad on which, by February 15th, a 200-bed fever hospital is due to stand.

Yet if China’s resolve impresses outsiders, the dark side of one-party rule also stands exposed. Changde must prepare for the worst in part because the authorities in Wuhan and the surrounding province of Hubei, Hunan’s neighbour, hid the virus’s impact for weeks. A desire to earn trust and avoid Wuhan’s fate probably explains why city-level propaganda officials in Changde—when this reporter was suddenly handed over to them by jumpy rural officials and police—granted unusual access to the new hospital.