Lately some Chilean media have published opinion articles on the epidemiological situation in Shanghai, mentioning that China’s “Zero Tolerance” policy is destined to greatly increase the economic, social and political cost of the pandemic in the country, as it can jeopardize the global supply chain. Also, there are other articles that consider that, although China’s pandemic control and prevention policies are effective, people depend too much on the government and do not actively vaccinate. In these publications, the scientific evidence to be able to make the aforementioned judgments is not observed. Regarding the above, I would like to make three clarifications:
In the first place, “dynamic zero Covid” is about paying the minimum in exchange for the greatest benefit, being the most efficient measure to achieve better control of the pandemic at the lowest cost. It is necessary to take into account that China is a large developing country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion inhabitants, and with a large number of elderly people and others with underlying disease conditions. However, medical resources per capita are limited. The idea of ”lying on your back” or “tang ping” in Chinese means doing nothing in the fight against the pandemic, which could cause hundreds of millions of infections and millions of deaths, something that our government cannot consent to and much less support, since China is a socialist country, led by the Communist Party, which always puts the well-being and interests of the people at the highest position; This means that the principle “people first, people’s life and health first” has always been and will be the most distinctive mark of China. Therefore, it is impossible for us to let the virus spread and put people’s lives and health at risk, in exchange for faster economic growth.
I would also like to clarify that the policy “Covid zero dynamic” does not seek to have zero infections, but rather aims to cut the chain of spread, adopting measures that take into account the fight against the pandemic, normal life and economic development. It should be noted that China has been, for two consecutive years, the world’s leading economy with positive growth and the highest rate, which shows that the prevention and control policy in China is the most successful.In the first quarter of this year, despite the serious outbreak of Covid -19 in Jilin, Shanghai and other places, China’s economy and foreign trade have achieved growth of 4.8% and 10.7%, once again demonstrating the effectiveness of the “Dynamic Zero Covid” policy .
Second, it is not China’s “dynamic zero Covid” policy that endangers the global supply chain, since for more than two years, this policy has allowed China to supply the whole world with the necessary materials for epidemic prevention, production and daily life, while achieving a strong economic recovery; in addition to helping countries in the control and prevention of the pandemic, the resumption of work and production, alleviating inflationary pressures in different countries and making important contributions to maintaining the stability and fluidity of global production and supply chains.
After the outbreak of the pandemic in Shanghai, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and Shanghai established an emergency coordination mechanism for production and supply chain demands to help 666 key manufacturing companies to resume work and production, thus ensuring the safety and stability of the production and supply chain.
Unlike China, some developed countries are passively fighting the pandemic, but “shake off the blame” and politicize tracing the origin of the virus, promoting “economic decoupling” and “technological decoupling”. In addition to this, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has also recently been used to impose unilateral sanctions, resulting in shortages in the world supply of energy and food, and in rising prices; seriously disrupting the world economic order and worsening the international economic environment. These countries are the biggest threat to global production and supply chains.
Third, the pandemic control and prevention work is being led by the people. Responding to emergencies and maintaining public safety is the basic duty of a modern government, and to perform its duties well, it has to let the people play the leading role in the measures taken. During this outbreak of the pandemic in Shanghai, the prevention and control personnel have made great efforts and the general public has actively cooperated. All walks of life, compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas Chinese, have donated money and goods, showing a deep sense of solidarity. The Shanghai Municipal Government has also widely solicited and adopted the general public’s views and suggestions on fighting the pandemic. All sectors of society have actively cooperated to form a strong synergy, laying a solid foundation for the prevention and control of the pandemic. In addition, vaccination against COVID-19 in China has reached a total of 3.3 billion doses and almost 90% of people are fully vaccinated, so saying that people are not actively vaccinating is not true. .
Practice has shown that China’s pandemic prevention policy is in line with national conditions and anti-epidemic needs, and the outbreak of the pandemic in Shanghai will surely be contained very soon.
- The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of The counter.