ENCOURAGED by tremendous success of historic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) China has now vowed to work with other nations in launching ‘Silk Road of Health’ aimed at boosting cooperation in preventing epidemic control and prevention. In a written message to a high-level video conference on the Belt and Road International Cooperation, President Xi Jinping said that China would work with its partners to develop BRI into a model of cooperation for meeting challenges through unity — a model of health for protecting people’s safety and wellbeing, a model of recovery for restoring economic and social activity and a model of growth for unlocking development potential.
China has become a leader in the fight against the menace of Covid-19, which has changed the entire socio-economic landscape of the globe. It has not only successfully tackled the challenge and showed a way forward to the rest of the world but is also more than willing to share its experiences and extend fullest possible cooperation in controlling the virus and resuming the economic activities. China has afforded valuable support and assistance to many countries in addressing the problem and President Xi has also sent a highly reassuring message to the world community by indicating that his country would also share research and development related to Coronavirus vaccine. He said that China will do what it can and contribute its share to an early global victory against Covid-19 and the recovery of the global economy. There is no doubt that different countries took effective measures as per their local demands to check the spread of the virus and succeeded to some extent but China has rightly been pointing out from the very first day that Covid-19 is a global issue and must be tackled through global cooperation. The position taken by Beijing is borne out by the fact that the virus has spread rapidly to almost each and every corner of the world because the world has become a virtual village and countries cannot remain unaffected by happenings in other countries and regions. This means that failure or inability of just one country to eliminate the threat would pose danger to the rest of the world. Therefore, collective and cooperative approach will have to be adopted to deal with the challenge for which China has offered the platform of BRI and, more importantly, vaccine when developed should be made available to all countries in an equitable manner.
