Among the resources President Xi Jinping has deployed to arrest surging COVID deaths in Hong Kong is the Communist Party¡¯s pandemic fighter: a 71-year-old woman whose career at the near-top illuminates the glass ceiling in the world¡¯s most populous country.
Sun Chunlan is the only female vice premier in China¡¯s entrenched patriarchy, the sole woman on its powerful 25-member Politburo and, more recently, the top official overseeing its pandemic control. Now, she¡¯s been marshaled to help across the Hong Kong border, local media including the South China Morning Post have reported.
Unlike the ¡°nice guy¡± cadres Xi derides for failing to act, Sun¡¯s pandemic response has been portrayed in state media as decisive. After Xi¡¯an hospitals left non-COVID patients to die during a lockdown this year, she ordered medics on the ground to ¡°not turn away patients under any excuse.¡± When COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, the septuagenarian spent almost 100 days there without vaccines helping authorities isolate each case, a strategy pivotal to Beijing¡¯s unparalleled success in holding back the virus.
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