BEIJING: Three years on, some hard truths have proved what China has done right in the fight against COVID-19. China’s remarkable feat is too significant to be ignored, though some Western media have slandered and quibbled with them. The absurd, bloated and irresponsible smearing of China was only another episode of the farce by a few Western media with their deep-rooted bias, arrogance and double standards.
China’s achievement is real, concrete and hard-won. It has recorded the lowest rates of severe cases and mortality in the world, taken the initiative in the regular prevention and control phase, and bought precious time for universal vaccination, as well as rapid research and development of testing reagents and drugs.
Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and guided by the philosophy of putting the people and their lives first, China has protected people’s lives and health to the greatest extent and minimized the impact of the epidemic on the country’s economic and social development. Even in the COVID-hit years, the average life expectancy of Chinese people increased from 77.93 years in 2020 to 78.2 years in 2021. In 2020, China was the first major economy in the world to achieve positive economic growth. In 2021, China’s economic output expanded by over 8 percent, far outpacing other major economies.
China has given an effective solution in line with its national conditions with the lowest overall social cost, tested in practice. Experiences in combating various virus strains from Delta to Omicron have provided China with space for adjusting and optimizing anti-COVID measures in light of the new developments and the comprehensive assessment of varied conditions. The country has just announced renaming the Chinese term for COVID-19 from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection,” among a batch of downgraded management measures for the disease. –Agencies
