What made Xi Jinping break a PLA tradition - COVID or a Chinese military strategy?

As the head of the Chinese PLA, Xi Jinping broke the People's Liberation Army tradition and didn’t issue the first military order to kick off the PLA's activities in the new year. The order allows the CCP leader to demonstrate his power domestically while simultaneously giving him a chance to send a message to the outside world. Are the geopolitics in Indo-Pacific, such as the Japan-UK and Japan-US military collaborations, preventing him from showing power? How is this related to Chinese military strategies?