China's virus story gets an extravagant retelling after an year of 76-day Wuhan lockdown

With China's official death toll from the virus under 5,000, Beijing is on a prolonged victory lap to promote its narrative of how it contained Covid-19, engineered vaccines and rebooted its economy. China this week reported 2.3 percent GDP growth in 2020 - the slowest in decades but still the only major economy to post positive figures during the pandemic. As the official data was released, state media trumpeted the "resilience and vitality" of China's economy.

At the Wuhan exhibition hall, China's virus story gets an extravagant retelling. Visitors are transported back to early last year, when tributes flowed to the medics, army and authorities who were battling the virus at its ground zero. Rooms are bedecked in communist flags and party messages as videos celebrate health workers and the makeshift hospitals erected in record time. President Xi Jinping presides benevolently over the hall from life-sized photos, unmistakably the marshall of the virus response.

Many in Wuhan stick closely to the official story, especially with a team of experts from the World Health Organization poised to begin fieldwork to establish the virus' origins. "Wuhan had a tough year in 2020," Wang Chen, a 20-year-old resident, told AFP outside the exhibition, adding that China "handled the crisis very well." Stung by international criticism of cover-ups and bungling in the early weeks of the outbreak, China for months blocked the WHO team from visiting.

Unable to convince its critics in the Western world, China has reached out to poorer allies from Southeast Asia to Africa, promising to share vaccines at a reasonable price. Inside China, the communist leadership has been busy lacquering its version of events for domestic consumption. In September, Xi presented medals to pandemic health workers, hailing China's passing of an "extraordinary and historic test" as much of the world remained mired in high infection rates.