SCO Secretary-General Vladimir Norov’s interview with the China Pictorial magazine

The COVID-19 infection is rapidly spreading throughout the world; the coronavirus is now a common enemy of all mankind. In such a situation, it is essential to strengthen public healthcare and to promote close cooperation with all countries in the face of this new global challenge. The SCO, as an influential regional international organisation, is making a significant contribution to the fight against the pandemic, SCO Secretary-General Vladimir Norov said in an interview with the China Pictorial magazine.

Vladimir Norov: The decisive and effective measures taken by the Government of China to contain the novel coronavirus pneumonia are commendable.

The coronavirus hit China at the beginning of the year in a most brutal way, killing hundreds every day and afflicting tens of thousands of people. China held up well against a virus previously unknown to humankind and, thanks to comprehensive action, achieved tangible results.

China achieved success in fighting the outbreak thanks to several factors:

Firstly, the strong political will of the Chinese leaders, their quick reaction, high organisational skills and the ability to rally in the shortest possible time a huge potential to fight the disease. A key achievement was their efficiency, not only in the prompt adoption of decisions by the Central Leading Group for Epidemic Response and the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, but also their implementation.

Secondly, the Chinese people showed remarkable solidarity and responsibility — for several weeks, over a billion people lived by the same rules and thereby supported the actions of the Chinese leaders. This kind of rallying deserves respect as well as admiration. In the face of danger, people showed their best qualities, high civic responsibility, resilience and self-sacrifice.

An effective quarantine monitoring system was established nationwide. Never in global history has such an effective operation been implemented to simultaneously lock down and isolate entire cities and regions with populations exceeding several hundred million.

Thirdly, the professionalism of the Chinese doctors, epidemiologists and scientists enabled the successful diagnosing of the virus, exploring its transmission mechanisms and incubation period and treating patients with the coronavirus. China's experience with this disease has shown that "early detection, early warning, early isolation and early treatment" are the most effective measures.

An important role in containing COVID-19 was also played by China's production potential, in particular, the country was able to fully meet the needs of its healthcare institutions including lung ventilators, other medical equipment, protective gear and facemasks for the population; there were no interruptions in the food supply either.

Another great achievement of the Chinese government was their continuous communication with the people. This enabled the timely provision of comprehensive reliable information on the current situation to all residents of China as well as foreign countries too. China relied on modern communications, the latest information technologies, including the use of 5G networks. Its technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance became actively involved in containing the coronavirus. The mega-popular messenger, WeChat, launched a mini-app for quick notification of new outbreaks and video instructions on how to properly protect oneself during this period of time were available on Tiktok.

Generally speaking, China's experience was the first ever example of using modern technology to combat an infection.

In particular, AliBaba DAMO Academy developed a quick AI-based diagnostic system for COVID-19. With medical workers overloaded during the acute phase of the outbreak in China, this system proved effective and helped 26 hospitals diagnose more than 30,000 cases. This was a truly revolutionary breakthrough in medicine. Alibaba Health's online consultations have helped millions of people, and the DingTalk app taught online lessons to120 million pupils at 140,000 schools. Alibaba Global Initiatives also released a handbook titled "Digital Action for Entrepreneurs in the Age of Covid-19" which was distributed in all the SCO countries.

All the above testifies to the powerful financial as well as intellectual potential of Chinese companies.

In a word, China has passed this difficult test with dignity and introduced new standards of responding to infectious outbreaks, as well as the practical use of modern technologies in human life in emergency situations.

Other countries have yet to deal with the task China has solved with unprecedented scope and effectiveness in less than three months. An important result is obvious to me — China, at the cost of tremendous efforts, has helped the world gain time and has now extended a helping hand to 124 countries, generously sharing experience, medicine and protective equipment.

Vladimir Norov: Our people have a proverb: friends in need are friends indeed. The SCO Member States' response to the outbreak of the epidemic in China was timely and substantive. Heads of the SCO Member States, observer states and dialogue partners as well as other states expressed their unconditional and decisive support and solidarity with China's efforts. A complex of measures has also been implemented to provide humanitarian aid, first to China, and now that we have seen positive results, to other member states. All our countries are involved in this process by providing each other with finance, food, medical equipment and products.

Due to the spread of the coronavirus, the SCO Secretariat, in its role as coordination body, made a number of epidemic-related proposals and initiatives. Coordination is mostly carried out online now.

On 1 April 2020, experts from the SCO Healthcare Ministries held a meeting by videoconference, where they reviewed the epidemiologic situation in the member states and discussed ways to promote cooperation in order to strengthen control over the developments around COVID-19 and the search for an effective method to treat patients with a confirmed diagnosis. We intend to continue consultations on ways to counter the coronavirus at a higher level and to jointly adopt effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

Of course, multilateral cooperation in healthcare and ensuring the sanitary and epidemiologic wellbeing of the SCO countries' population is now more important than ever. Speaking about the SCO's current norms, cooperation is carried out in accordance with the Agreement between the Governments of the SCO Member States on Cooperation in Healthcare signed in Astana in 2011.

In addition to this, the Basic Action Plan for the development of cooperation of the SCO Member States in healthcare for 2019-2021 was adopted at the SCO Bishkek Summit on 14 June 2019. It includes an entire range of cooperation tasks in the area of sanitary and epidemiologic wellbeing and improvement of the prevention procedures and governance of infection diseases.

As of today, during Russia's SCO presidency in 2020, work is underway to develop a Joint Action Plan to implement the Statement on Joint Efforts against the Threat of Epidemics in the SCO Space adopted by the SCO Heads of State Council in Qingdao on 10 June 2018.

Vladimir Norov: This epidemic of the novel coronavirus pneumonia has once again become an instructive lesson for the whole of humanity: during the era of globalisation, countries get more interdependent, and their interests are interconnected as never before. This is why the idea of building a "society of shared human destiny" has become even more important.

It is difficult to say that the coronavirus is the last global trial. I believe that all the nations and countries must realise this and take all the efforts necessary to cooperate based on the principles of mutual support, joint development, creation of common good and countering of traditional and new threats and challenges. Today joint efforts to ensure international epidemiologic safety at the global level is more important than ever, including close cooperation with the World Health Organisation.

Vladimir Norov: We can see that the outbreak of the epidemic had an impact on the whole global economy. For example, according to the data of the International Monetary Fund, the global economy in 2020 was expected to grow by 3.3 percent compared with last year. However, the spread of the virus made its own adjustments, and IMF has already corrected its prognosis lowering the rate of growth of the global economy to 1.5 percent, because the spread of coronavirus is destroying global supply chains and affecting the service sector.

The outbreak's impact on the Chinese economy is temporary. Now full industrial production, aviation, automobile and railway transport are resuming and people's lives are returning to normal in China.

China's effective action in countering the coronavirus gave it an important time advantage allowing it to begin restoring the national economy faster than anyone else. This significant factor will not only have an impact on the speed of China's economic development but will also be decisive for the restoration of the entire global economy. I am confident that the Chinese locomotive will once again drive the entire world.

I agree with the prognoses of most Chinese experts that by the second quarter of this year the economy will be able to make up for the losses of the first three months. I proceed also from the supposition that the plans made for China's economic development have always been balanced and have always been implemented.

China, being "the world's factory" and "the world's market," has quite a vigorous economy with significant potential. The fundamental preconditions for China's long-term sustainable economic growth remain the same. Both the Chinese government and the Chinese people have the confidence and ability to support economic and social stability and make an increasing contribution to the development of the global economy and the stable development of the global production chains.