Cna is delaying the annual gathering of nearly 3,000 national legislators in Beijing, according to state media.
The National People’s Congress’ Standing Committee voted today to delay the plenary session, which was due to open March 5. No new date has been announced.
Why this is significant: The National People’s Congress (NPC) is the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. The annual plenary session, one of the biggest political events each year, has not been delayed or suspended since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s.
It went ahead as scheduled in 2003 amid the SARS epidemic, which originated in China and hit the country hard. SARS eventually spread across the world to infect more than 8,000 people, killing at least 774.