Red Star News:
The COVID-19 pandemic is still ravaging the world and hampering international cooperation. What measures have China and African countries adopted to deal with challenges brought about by the pandemic? Thank you.
Wu Peng:
Thank you for your question. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, and how to address the challenge is something that concerns all countries. Confronted by COVID-19, China and Africa have withstood a severe challenge, helping each other and fighting side by side to defeat the pandemic through solidarity and cooperation.
In June 2020, the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity against COVID-19 was held via video link, making China the first country in the world to convene an anti-pandemic summit with Africa. At the summit, President Xi Jinping called for the accelerated implementation of the outcomes of the FOCAC Beijing Summit, with greater priority to be given to cooperation in the areas of public health, economic reopening, and people's livelihoods. He also announced a series of measures regarding anti-pandemic assistance to Africa, debt relief, debt service suspension, and economic reopening, which have been highly praised and widely welcomed in Africa. Since the summit, the two sides have closely worked together on pandemic prevention and control, resuming economic activity, and progressing China-Africa anti-pandemic cooperation.
Nearly 100,000 Chinese technicians and service workers stood fast at their posts, and a lot of China-invested companies went to Africa to facilitate the reopening of the plants and the projects there, which, therefore, ensured more than 1,100 China-Africa cooperation projects operating despite the pandemic. Thanks to the joint efforts of China and African countries, many major projects have been completed and made important progress, making a great contribution to the local fight against COVID-19 and ensuring people's livelihood improvement and economic recovery. Despite the pandemic, China-Africa cooperation has achieved remarkable results and has been resilient.
After COVID-19 struck Africa, China immediately offered humanitarian assistance, the largest such program in scale and the most difficult to implement since the founding of the PRC. It is challenging to ensure the delivery of the anti-pandemic materials to Africa due to the long distance and inconvenient transportation. Despite this, we have overcome the difficulties.
In coordination with local governments, enterprises, and social organizations, the Central Government of China has provided emergency anti-pandemic supplies to 53 African countries and the AU based on their respective needs, with these emergency supplies reaching almost all areas across the continent. China has also actively shared its anti-epidemic experience with African countries and dispatched anti-epidemic medical expert groups or short-term anti-epidemic medical teams to 17 African countries to fight the epidemic alongside local people. At the beginning of this year, it pushed for the earlier start of the construction of the headquarters of the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a project assisted by China. The project is undergoing rapid progress, and we are confident that it will be completed in about two years. To help African countries cope with the pandemic and overcome temporary difficulties, China has actively implemented the G20's Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which I have provided some information about.
Moreover, China actively honors its commitment to making vaccines a global public good and has taken the lead to supply vaccines to Africa. So far, China has provided nearly 200 million doses of vaccine to Africa. Chinese enterprises are actively engaging in joint vaccine production in Africa with local firms, which is something Africa really needs.
The pandemic is still raging, posing challenges to socio-economic development in Africa and disrupting the people-to-people exchange between China and Africa. As such, cooperation on public health will be one of the major focuses at the Ministerial Conference of FOCAC in Dakar. As I mentioned earlier, China is ready to continue its support for African countries in their fight against the pandemic in accordance with the pandemic situation and the willingness of relevant countries. China and Africa are confident that we will beat the virus, and promote China-Africa cooperation to ensure high-quality development. Thank you.
