BEIJING: Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi hailed the country’s effort in the global public health emergency at a global promotional event in Beijing for central China’s Hubei Province, which was among the hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak, on Monday.
Hubei’s provincial capital, Wuhan City, commenced lockdown restrictions on its 10-million-strong population on January 23 last year, a move that contributed greatly to preventing the disease from spreading wider during the early stages. “The people of Wuhan and Hubei at large have not just made a great sacrifice to China’s pandemic control work but to the scale of the world,” Wang said at the event.
Most of the factories and businesses in Wuhan came to a halt during the 76-day lockdown, while outbound traffic was strictly restricted. Things gradually resumed operation after the lockdown was lifted in early April.
The Chinese diplomat also spoke highly of the region’s economic recovery work, as Hubei eyes a 10 percent GDP growth after a virus-ravaged year.
“[Hubei] has cashed in on the public health emergency and forced a transition,” Wang said. “They’ve pushed an ‘upgrade’ with a ‘start over.” To help the city recover, China has offered Wuhan a package of favorable policies, including financial support, tax reductions and the introduction of projects. Local authorities also handed out vouchers worth a total of 500 million yuan ($76.4 million) to encourage consumption.
“Wuhan has great potential for consumption,” Professor Huang Manyu from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law told CGTN.
“Last year was difficult for Wuhan, but its total retail sales of consumer goods put it in the top ten in China. That means the epidemic only had a short-term impact on the city, and it won’t stop Wuhan from becoming an international consumption center in the future.”
Later, Ying Yong, secretary of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Wang Zhonglin, secretary of the CPC Wuhan Municipal Committee, delivered speeches respectively.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN
News exchange item
