China's COVID policy a failure? No!

China has succeeded, more than any other country, in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists can better explain why China implemented the strict pandemic prevention and control measures. But one thing is certain — that the strict measures were aimed at safeguarding the lives and health of the Chinese people.

China has left no stone unturned in minimizing the effects of the pandemic, including those during the surge in infections at the end of last year and early this year. It is the success of the anti-pandemic measures that paved the way for China to "re-open" its borders to travellers in January.

That China's COVID-19 fatality rate is among the lowest in the world shows the effectiveness of the country's strict anti-pandemic measures. Accordingly, China's scientific planning for the next phase of COVID-19 vaccination continues.

But despite the success of its anti-pandemic measures, China continues to face Western media's criticism. Some Western media and politicians are manipulating the facts to project China as a threat to the world. Some organizations and people have even rekindled the old conspiracy theory that the novel coronavirus might have leaked during an experiment from a laboratory in Wuhan, Hubei province.

But the fact is, China is neither a threat to any country nor is there any scientific evidence to prove that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab and spread across the world.

China is the world's second-largest economy and capable of overcoming any emergency, including the COVID-19 outbreak. It has been the fastest-growing major economy for years and could overtake the United States in terms of economic scale. Perhaps this is why the US-led West is desperate to check China's peaceful rise.

Many Western media outlets continue their sordid attempt to paint China in a bad light. China does not fire corrupt or unproductive officials, but rather "purges "them; China does not grant advantageous loans to develop infrastructure in developing countries, but it "traps" them in debt; China uses "vaccine diplomacy" to supply COVID-19 vaccines while other countries donate them selflessly; and China "monitors and controls" close contacts of COVID-19 cases while other countries trace them. These are some examples of some Western journalists writing about China.

Moreover, some Western media outlets are deliberately distorting the facts while ignoring the real facts about China's anti-pandemic measures, including the largest vaccine drive in the world, and making unwarranted accusations against China's pandemic fight.

But these lies are untenable. More than 1.6 billion passenger trips were made during the Spring Festival holiday this year, and about 10,640 cinemas across the country opened for business. With the drastic increase in bookings for domestic flights and hotels, China's anti-pandemic measures have shifted from vaccination and other anti-pandemic measures to making efforts to resume full production.

The Communist Party of China, guided by the philosophy of always putting the people first, has protected the lives and health of the people in order to ensure the economic and social development of the country, thus exposing the Western media's double standard when it comes to dealing with emergencies, including pandemics.

The author is the executive director of the Pakistan Research Center for a Community with Shared Future, Islamabad,