Xi Jinping sends in the hard men to deal with the Wuhan virus

WHEN SECRETIVE, Leninist parties have bad news to get out of the way, they do not hang about. In the space of a single day, February 13th, China’s ruling Communist Party fired the officials who run the province and city at the heart of the epidemic of covid-19, announced a big jump in the number of recorded virus infections there, and sent in hardliners close to Xi Jinping, the country’s supreme leader, to clean up the mess.

The unusually brutal reshuffle saw the top party post in the central province of Hubei, where more than 48,000 infections and 1,310 deaths had been recorded as The Economist went to press, handed to the mayor of Shanghai, Ying Yong, who is 62. Mr Ying’s background is in public security, the law courts and the feared discipline-inspection commission that roots out malfeasance by officials. He earned Mr Xi’s trust while serving as a police chief and discipline inspector in the coastal province of Zhejiang, when Mr Xi was Zhejiang’s party boss from 2002-07.