TOKYO -- On Saturday, the first day of the Year of the Rat, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, who doubles as the country's president, summoned six other top-level leaders for an emergency meeting.
President Xi Jinping has consolidated so much power that China's bureaucracy fears acting without his orders, a situation that initially hampered Beijing's response to the Wuhan pneumonia. (Nikkei montage/Reuters/Akira Kodaka)
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