BEIJING: In the run-up to its centenary this year, the Communist Party of China (CPC) demonstrated its exemplary governance capability by leading the Chinese people in efficiently containing the COVID-19 outbreak and eliminating absolute poverty in the world’s most populous country. The national spirit behind both the victory over poverty and the strategic outcomes of COVID-19 control offers a glimpse into the Party’s strong leadership and the nation’s solidarity and strength. In early 2020, a previously unknown virus wreaked havoc in Hubei Province, prompting the Chinese government to take unprecedented measures to curb its rapid spread, including sealing off the hardest-hit provincial capital, Wuhan.
Defying the gloomy predictions of many foreign observers, China in just three months reduced new cases from thousands each day to zero. The Chinese leadership later attributed the success to the people’s fighting spirit, which puts people’s lives first and values nationwide solidarity, sacrifice, a respect for science, and a sense of purpose for humanity.
China has shown strong solidarity throughout the battle. With a mature mobilization system, China ensured that even villagers in remote mountains were aware that everyone must act as one to defeat the virus. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people answered the government’s call to wear masks, stay at home and forego festive activities during the Spring Festival, the most important holiday of the year for Chinese people. Public cooperation helped China build a people’s “Great Wall” against the virus.
Medical staff and resources were poured into the worst-affected cities. At the peak of the epidemic, one in 10 intensive care medics in China was working in Wuhan. Backing the nationwide mobilization was science. China swiftly erected makeshift hospitals, set up quarantine facilities and made mask-wearing compulsory. Medical treatment, rapid contact tracking and mass nucleic acid testing all contributed to the efficient control of the epidemic in a short period of time in China. Openness and internationalism have also been features of China’s fight against COVID-19 since the very beginning. Often neglected by China critics is the fact that China began to regularly update the World Health Organization and relevant countries on the new disease as early as Jan. 3, 2020.
Through the course of its intensive and wide-ranging emergency humanitarian aid, China has supplied more than 350 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines abroad, including donations to more than 80 countries.
In retrospect, the country’s national spirit in combating COVID-19 has underlined the CPC’s inherent people-centered philosophy, along with a globalist touch fitting into China’s call for the construction of a global community with a shared future.
In early 2021, China announced that it had eliminated absolute poverty, after lifting its remaining 98.99 million rural residents out of poverty over the past eight years. The announcement marked a complete victory in China’s long-running campaign to end poverty. Since the late 1970s, China has lifted more than 770 million rural residents out of poverty due to continuous poverty relief efforts. –Agencies
