New Delhi: Communist Party of China defended its heavily criticised Zero-COVID policy and refuted any possibilities of it being rolled back. The party while describing Beijing’s initiatives as being most cost effective, said that it is a “reality” that COVID is still lurking.
Spokesperson for the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Sun Yeli, as quoted by news agency PTI, said, “China’s measures to tackle the outbreak of Covid-19 has indeed worked well for the nation and the Zero-COVID policy is based on science.”
He added, “COVID has dealt a heavy blow to economies all around the world. As things stand, however, it is still lingering, that is the reality.”
Days ahead of the Congress, Beijing has witnessed rare public protests against the President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping.
The protests denounced the Zero-COVID policy of systematic lockdowns of cities by presenting number of cases and showing how the lockdown had resulted in the slowdown of the economy which ultimately led to unemployment.
Sun upon being asked whether the measures that led to the economic slowdown be relaxed in near future said, “We give top priority to people’s health and safety. This is part and parcel of our epidemic response efforts and the dynamic zero-COVID policy has been adopted in light of China’s national realities and it is a science-based policy. China has a big population including elderly people and the development is uneven among regions and medical resources are insufficient.”
He further added, “On the whole, the dynamic zero-COVID policy has enabled us to keep infection and fatality rates at a very low level.”
Notably, since 2013 to 2022, China’s GDP under the leadership of Xi Jinping has steadily been growing at the rate of 6.6 per cent whereas the global average growth rate of other developing economies stood at 2.6-3.7 per cent.
“The Chinese economy has strong resilience, great potential and robust vitality, and the fundamentals for its long-term positive growth remain unchanged,” he said.