Feedback, sending materials: China, which has become the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic in the eyes of the world, wants to change its image by offering its help and expertise to foreign countries that are increasingly affected.
Pointed to as the source of the coronavirus, it has suffered like its nationals a certain ostracism in recent weeks, but now offers experts, advice and screening tests to the international community.
A deputy foreign minister said Thursday that China has already shared its experience in treating patients with “a large number” of countries.
A team of experts has been dispatched to Iran – one of the main centers abroad with South Korea and Italy -, sending 5,000 screening kits and 250,000 masks.
Test equipment has also been shipped to Pakistan, Japan and some African countries, according to a spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Zhao Lijian.
“While continuing our prevention work in China (…) we will provide, within the limits of our capacities, support for foreign countries,” he said this week.
At a time when the number of new infections is falling in China and increasing internationally, the health authorities are vigilant in the face of the arrival in the country of infected people from abroad.
Twenty of them have been identified so far, some of them from Italy and Iran.
Several cities, including Beijing, impose 14-day quarantines on people from the most affected countries. And the province of Hubei (center), epicenter of the epidemic, remains cut off from the world since the end of January.
Guide in Persian
Sign of a trend reversal: if there is still a month, it is foreigners who were in a hurry to evacuate their nationals from Hubei, it is China which repatriated this week 146 of its citizens from Iran.
The Chinese health authorities have shared their technical advice via videoconference with the European Union (EU) and countries like Azerbaijan, Belarus, Armenia or Turkmenistan.
A guide to good practice has also been translated into Persian, the official language in Iran, and available for free download.
In addition, China, in shortage of medical supplies last month, especially masks, has since massively resumed production in its factories.
According to the Ministry of Industry, the production of protective suits now exceeds demand. To the point that it encourages companies to export.
China will continue to “claim a form of authority” over the epidemic in the name of its achievements, according to sinologist Dorothy Solinger of the University of California.
“The concern is that most countries cannot command their people like the Chinese government. It is therefore unlikely that China will truly become a model.”
‘Propaganda’
The government was the subject of a torrent of criticism on social networks after a doctor from Hubei, reprimanded by the police for alerting the authorities to the coronavirus, died of the disease in February.
Local authorities have also been criticized for the slow response.
But the media today take advantage of the ebb of new contaminations in the country to praise the Chinese political system.
“It would be impossible for European countries to adopt the radical measures that China has taken,” said the nationalist tabloid Global Times in a recent editorial.
Beijing seeks to show “that its system of governance is better than that of Western democracies,” said Yun Jiang, a researcher at the Australian National University.
“The propaganda has focused on what it presents as a competitive advantage for the country”, with in particular “the very rapid construction of hospitals and the sudden shutdown of towns”, underlines Ms. Yun.
According to her, if other countries are struggling to contain the Covid-19 disease, China will be free to point out that the initial criticisms of its management of the crisis were perhaps unjustified.
“It would be a blessing for her in her communications campaign,” said Ms. Yun.
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