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.