At the Global Think Tanks Online Forum on International Cooperation to Combat COVID-19, a video conference held in Beijing in early June, over 160 representatives from think tanks and media outlets from 48 countries and nine international organizations pooled their collective wisdom, conducted in-depth discussions and exchanged views centering on the theme “Enhancing Global Cooperation to Combat COVID-19 and Build a Global Community of Shared Future.” At the end of the video meeting, a joint statement was released. The statement noted that major infectious diseases are a common enemy of humanity, and only with solidarity and cooperation can the international community overcome them. All countries should live up to their responsibilities toward their people and promote global cooperation against COVID-19.
Scientific and technological cooperation has become the most vigorous force driving the global fight against the pandemic. On May 30, the International Webinar on Global Science and Technology Development and Governance under the COVID-19 Epidemic was held. Experts and scholars from international organizations including the World Health Organization and the World Federation of Public Health Associations, and nations, such as Italy, Brazil, and Singapore, appealed to the international scientific realm to launch concerted efforts in coping with the ravaging pandemic.
The medical faculties of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and China’s Zhejiang University will roll out collaborative moves to collect big data to facilitate comprehension of the discrepancy between diverse patients and wage anti-pandemic initiatives leveraging big data. Since the establishment of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Resource, a dedicated database for bio-information of COVID-19, the Novel Coronavirus National Science and Technology Resource Service System, and the COVID-19 Pneumonia Scientific Literature Sharing Platform by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, about 48 million downloads, access and retrieval actions have been provided to more than 370,000 users worldwide; and the Tocilizumab-supported therapeutic plan for severe COVID-19 patients devised by the University of Science and Technology of China has been promoted to more than 20 countries around the globe and widely shared by the international medical community.
As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc, China is ready to provide assistance to other countries to the fullest extent of its capability. Since June, groups of Chinese anti-epidemic medical experts reached out and traveled to Bangladesh and Palestine to offer their assistance and expertise. Recently, at the 73rd World Health Assembly, China announced that it would provide US $2 billion in international assistance over two years to support epidemic-affected countries, especially developing countries, in their anti-pandemic battle and economic recovery; establish 30 cooperation mechanisms between China and Africa’s counterpart hospitals to help Africa enhance its disease prevention and control capabilities; China’s COVID-19 vaccine, after being developed and put into use, will be utilized as a global public good.
The sustained progress of society will not be deterred by the lingering pandemic. Epidemic prevention and control, in concert with economic and social development, will be the new challenges for human beings.
In mid-June, Chinese President Xi Jinping, during an inspection tour in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, pointed out that China should utilize the opportunity associated with the Belt and Road Initiative to uphold opening-up both externally and internally, cultivate an open economy, create an enabling open business environment to promote higher-level opening-up and higher-quality development.
Amid ongoing efforts to control the epidemic, China will achieve breakthroughs in core technologies motivated by innovation, and foster new international competitive edges by tapping the potential brought by the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation; the construction of free trade zones will be accelerated, market access will be relaxed, and the business environment will be optimized to spur coordinated development of private capital and foreign capital, contributing to a new pattern of all-round opening-up featuring links running eastward and westward, over land and sea; the supply-side structural reform will be deepened, and industrial upgrading will be propelled by booming consumption to blaze new paths for higher-quality development.
After the Master Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port was released on June 1, Hainan Province, through institutional innovation and improving its business environment, will catalyze the legislative process for the Hainan free trade port, accelerate the formulation of the negative list for market access, and the special lists for foreign investment access, and trade in services, and further simplify and streamline the business approval procedure.
On June 13, the free port signed agreements with partners on 35 projects, eight of which were foreign-funded. Hainan Province will cooperate with Electricite De France, Shenzhen Stock Exchange, China Eastern Airlines, Royal Dutch Shell, Avolon Holdings Limited, and other enterprises to advance the construction of the free trade port, and promote industrial development, and public services for people’s livelihood in Hainan.
