Beijing, Feb 15 (AFP/APP): China’s government is purging unpopular local officials and commandeering heroic stories of doctors on the frontline as it tries to shield itself from public rage over the handling of the deadly coronavirus epidemic. Facing the biggest challenge of his presidency, Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has cast the crisis as a “people’s war” and state media have gone into overdrive to regain control of public opinion. Images of doctors and nurses in masks and full protective suits, leaving their families behind to care for patients, have dominated the airwaves. Government censors, meanwhile, have made rare exceptions to allow for criticism online — but mostly when directed at local officials accused of negligence in central Hubei province and its capital Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak. One comment that was allowed to circulate on the Twitter-like Weibo platform declared that “scores should be settled against all the officials in Wuhan after the crisis”, which has claimed more than 1,500 lives and infected some 66,000 people. An investigation into health inspectors in neighbouring Hunan province who had leaked residents’ personal information also became a trending search on the platform. On Thursday, the political chiefs of Hubei and Wuhan … Continue reading Heroes and villains: Beijing crafts its narrative on virus outbreak