China promotes its 'heroic' battle against virus in new exhibition

People visit the art exhibition 'Unity Is Strength' art exhibition, which includes 'Eternity And Brevity' (right) by artist Pang Maokun, on the fight against the coronavirus at the National Museum of China in Beijing. Photo: AFP

Chinese workers raise their fists beside a red communist flag in a painting displayed at a Beijing museum, one of nearly 200 works put together for a propaganda exhibition that hails, not the Maoist past, but the "heroic deeds" of frontline medics fighting the coronavirus.

Since the discovery of the deadly contagion in Wuhan at the end of last year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to model itself as the vanguard in the fight against Covid-19.