Local officials turned what authorities had hoped would be a gradual reopening into a sudden one in their scramble to implement Xi Jinping’s directives.
In early February, at the beginning of the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus in China, Wang Fang, a local Communist Party secretary, was working around the clock. As an official responsible for 19,000 residents of a neighborhood in the city of Deyang in Sichuan province, Wang spent her days answering questions from concerned citizens via WeChat and figuring out who needed to quarantine.
In a post she published on the Sichuan Provincial Women’s Federation’s official WeChat account, Wang outlined a tightly scheduled 14-hour day. She said the responsibilities she shouldered as a female Party member at the local level outweighed the fears and worries of motherhood.