In order to decipher the unravelling of the post pandemic world order it will be essential to assess the post pandemic policies of governments. China first captured the attention of the world through the onset of the outbreak of the virus and later through its aid related activities worldwide. It will be fascinating to explore the post pandemic Chinese diplomacy and governance.
The State Council in China has issued guidelines regarding improvement in China’s business environment and better serving market entities. It has stressed six categories of policies and measures, including more streamlined and efficient approval procedures for construction projects and their financing, and an optimized business environment for foreign trade and investment. It also highlights support for employment and entrepreneurship, improved quality and efficiency of services provided to businesses.
Specifically, the guideline states that the market-entry threshold should be further lowered for the education, medical services and sports sectors, etc., and unnecessary structural and systematic barriers should be removed. In the meanwhile, the Chinese government has been regularly updating information about the epidemic, and imparting public knowledge on how to stay healthy and avoid infection. Moreover, China has worked to pool the efforts of leading infectious specialists at home and abroad to focus on research and development of vaccines and medicines.
Regarding China’s efforts towards medical research on COVID 19 President Xi Jinping vowed at the World Health Assembly that vaccines China develops will become a “global public good” once they are ready for use, and it will be China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries. Furthermore, science and technology minister Wang Zhigang also emphasized that “developing a vaccine is still the fundamental strategy in our effort to overcome the new coronavirus”.
Big Chinese enterprises like the Jack Ma foundation and the Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US in wake of the pandemic. Jack Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province that has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. According to Ma’s biographer, Duncan Clark, he has the ability, money and the logistics power to get a Chinese supply plane wherever it needs to go. Despite China’s enormous success in overcoming the crisis a few other quarantine models have been able to overcome the pandemic spread effectively like New Zealand and South Korea particularly; also many women led countries have performed fairly better.
The goal shouldn’t be to project oneself as a well-meaning philanthropist country, but rather to bring about meaningful change through building systems for global health
South Korea’s experience proved that widespread diagnostic capacity is key to epidemic control. Contact tracing is also very helpful in epidemic control, as is case isolation. Alongside, the government advised people to wear masks, wash their hands, avoid crowds and meetings, work remotely, and to join online religious services instead of going to churches. The national testing capacity reached a staggering 15,000 tests per day. There are 43 drive-through testing stations nationwide a concept now being widely adopted in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Ministry of the Interior also rolled out a smartphone app that can track the quarantined and collect data on symptoms. The individual patient data, could enable epidemiologists to model the outbreak and determine the number of new infections triggered by each case, also known as the basic reproductive number or R0 ( the time from infection to the onset of symptoms; and whether early diagnosis improved patients’ outcomes).
Despite China’s wide ranging support and efforts towards COVID 19 relief efforts many countries view it with suspicion and blames it for hiding the truth regarding the outbreak and not communicating the risks in a timely fashion. At the European level, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, stated that there is a “battle of narratives” going on, with China’s authoritarian model seeking to discredit the democratic narrative. Under Borrell’s responsibility, the European External Action Service (EEAS) has published reports dedicated to combating foreign narratives and misinformation regarding the Covid-19.
While the country was working to promote its “soft power” before the Covid-19 pandemic, the crisis opened up a window of opportunity to circulate massive messages about China’s domestic model of governance and its international ambitions according to some experts. And yet not many countries around the world sought to single out the US for governing over a massively destructive housing bubble, even though the repercussions from that economic crisis are still visible. On the contrary, many welcomed the US economy’s return to sustained growth in recent years, because a strong US economy benefits the rest of the world.
According to some Chinese news reports rather than applying a double standard and fixating on China’s undoubtedly large errors, we would do better to consider what China can teach us. Specifically, we should be focused on better understanding the technologies and diagnostic techniques that China used for plummeting massive outbreaks and to restart parts of its economy within weeks of the height of the outbreak. It would be instructive considering what policies China could adopt to put itself back on a path toward 6% annual growth, because the Chinese economy inevitably will play a significant role in the global recovery in the foreseeable future.
The Islamabad-based National Institute of Health (NIH) has received an offer of medical research collaboration from China’s Sinopharm International Corp for the successful clinical trials in Pakistan to make it one of the first few countries for the launch of a COVID-19 vaccine. The Chinese pharma company suggested that Pakistan adopt a similar approach through the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP). It acknowledged that the institute has the necessary technical capacity for conducting clinical trials on recruited participants through a nominated medical institution. Overall, Chinese post COVID 19 aid to Pakistan through the government or Jack Ma foundation has been viewed as highly positive, benevolent and favorable amidst the widespread outbreak.
The idea of China using soft power due to pandemic through reaching out with medical aid across the world is being purported. However, there needs to be a recognition of the role of middle powers to deal with the global pandemic more effectively as many developed countries like US, Italy, Spain and UK have suffered massive human and economic loss succumbing under the contagious pandemic. Hence the world needs a more inclusive decision making and coordinated efforts to combat the crisis and rise strong through resumption of trade, investment and development coordination and deeper economic engagement.
The UN General Secretary Antonio Gueterres, while speaking at Nelson Mandela Memorial in July 2020 suggested: “COVID 19 is a human tragedy but it has also created a generational opportunity. An opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world. The response to the pandemic and to the widespread discontent that preceded it, must be based on a New Social Contract and a New Global Deal that create equal opportunities for all and respect the rights and freedoms of all.”
It will be critical to integrate the diverse knowledge systems into health-education strategies for disease prevention and treatment. The goal shouldn’t be to project oneself as a well-meaning philanthropist country, but rather to bring about meaningful change through building systems for global health.
The writer is an Economic Analyst and a Columnist based in Lahore