Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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China Plans to Hold Long-Delayed Leadership Meetings in Late May

Joyce Huang

   China has decided to convene its much-delayed Two Sessions -- the
   annual meetings of the national legislature and the top political
   advisory body -- in late May amid signs that the ruling Communist Party
   believes it has made strides to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.
   Both meetings will be halved to last only one week, with the Chinese
   People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opening on May 21,
   and the National People's Congress (NPC) on May 22, state-run Xinhua
   News Thursday reported.
   It remains unclear if some 3,000 lawmakers and 2,000 political advisers
   from across the country will attend the meetings in person or
   virtually.
   Convening the meetings sends a political signal that China, the country
   where the pandemic began, has brought the coronavirus under control,
   observers say.
   Challenges ahead
   But challenges remain for the top leadership to address the economic
   fallout from the global pandemic and growing confrontations with
   foreign powers, including the United States, observers add.
   The meetings will set out programs for the continued containment of the
   pandemic and its economic and social fallout, Steve Tsang, director of
   SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said in an email to
   VOA.
   Tsang believes there will not be any political fallout to address since
   President Xi Jinping will be presented as having triumphed and done
   well against the public health crisis.
   That is because both meetings often work as rubber stamps to endorse
   the top leadership's policies and thus leave little room to challenge
   its authority or for free flow of ideas, said Fan Shih-Ping, a
   professor of political science at National Taiwan Normal University in
   Taipei.

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