Page 60 - AEI Insights Vol. 7 2021

AEI Insights, Vol 7, Issue 1, 2021

Number of Cases

Source: Statista (2020)

Figure 1: Number of novel coronavirus COVID-19 cumulative confirmed and death cases in China (January 20 -
November 15, 2020）

Figure 1 shows that the COVID-19 cumulative number of confirmed cases and deaths in China
from 20 January to 15 November 2020. The COVID-19 has infected 91,800 people. 4742
people have died from COVID-19 until 15 November of 2020 in China (Statista, 2020).

On 7 June 2020, a white paper titled "Fighting COVID-19: China in Action" was released by
the China's State Council Information Office to present its prevention, control, treatment efforts
in battling COVID-19 and China's cooperation with the international community (Chinadaily,
2020). Not only does the document contain the efforts and experiences of China in the fight
against the pandemic, but it also provides recommendations for other countries on how to win
over the coronavirus (Kobierski, 2020).

According to the white paper, there are five stages that China's fight against the COVID-19.
The first stage is "swift response to the public health emergency from 27 December 2019 to 19
January 2020": China immediately took action to carry out etiological and epidemiological
investigations after unknown pneumonia cases were identified (SCIO, 2020). The second stage
is "initial progress in containing the virus from 20 January to 20 February 2020": due to the
rapidly increasing confirmed cases, the Chinese government conducted a crucial step that
closed Wuhan's outbound traffic to stem the virus's spread (SCIO, 2020). The third stage is
"newly confirmed domestic cases on the Chinese mainland drop to single digits from 21
February to 17 March 2020": the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made
a significant decision to coordinate COVID-19 prevention and control with economic and
social development, and orderly resumed work and daily life to minimize the losses caused by
COVID-19(SCIO, 2020). The fourth stage is "Wuhan and Hubei – an initial victory in a critical
battle from 18 March to 28 April 2020" : the spread of the national pandemic with Wuhan as

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