DM Monitoring
ZAGREB: As China is trying to provide Europe with much-needed assistance for fighting COVID-19, some groundless accusations have emerged in the Western world distorting China’s goodwill. Such China-smearing rhetoric hurts the Chinese people’s feelings and is detrimental to the global fight against the pandemic.
China has donated medical supplies to European countries and facilitated their procurement of large quantities of much-needed resources, despite its domestic production challenges.
Chinese medical experts are currently working in hospitals in Italy and Serbia to help save lives.
Moreover, Chinese local governments, charity organizations and business communities are also making contributions through various channels. So are the Chinese communities in Europe.
China has been returning the generous kindness it received from Europe at the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak, now that the country has effectively got its domestic virus situation under control, with its economic and trade activities gradually resumed.
China is a grateful nation. As a Chinese saying goes, “the grace of dripping water should be reciprocated by a gushing spring.” The following example may well explain the Chinese way to return a kindness. In the year 2008, in the wake of a devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, Italy was among the very first countries to send a rescue team to the earthquake epicenter. Back then, 14 Italian rescue experts helped save around 900 lives. It is therefore easily understood that China’s first COVID-19 medical team to Italy is mostly composed of doctors from Sichuan. In the past months, China has made huge efforts and sacrifices to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. A detailed timeline published last week shows that China was the first country to report the new virus to the World Health Organization (WHO). Starting from Jan. 3, China has been regularly informing the WHO, relevant countries and regions about the outbreak. On Jan. 12, China’s National Health Commission shared with the WHO the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus, which laid a solid foundation for global scientific research and vaccine development effort.
Well-informed people will conclude that China has released information on COVID-19 and advanced international cooperation on epidemic response in an open, transparent and responsible manner. The pandemic heightens the importance of building a community of shared future for mankind. China has fulfilled its due international obligations and taken drastic and effective measures to safeguard global health security. It has been doing this out of its strong sense of responsibility rather than the so-called a feeling of guilt as accused by some. Now is not the time for finger-pointing. It is time to quit politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic and pool global resources to save lives. As Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, wrote in an article for European media in late March: “When people’s lives and health are at stake, the only right thing to do is to put politics and prejudice aside and join the global fight against the virus.”
