Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks at the dinner party of the Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Coronavirus Disease and the fifth Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Feb. 19, 2020. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday co-chaired the Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos on the COVID-19 epidemic with the current ASEAN-China country coordinator, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Lopez Locsin. Other ASEAN foreign ministers attended the meeting.

The deadly virus has presented challenges of varying degree to ASEAN members. The social and economic development in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand is more advanced, giving them better capability to deal with public health emergencies, while the public health systems in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar are relatively weak, and these countries lack the capability to effectively battle the epidemic. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said, "Our greatest concern is the potential of the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems."

Even Singapore, which has been commended for its crisis management capability, has reported one of the highest numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases outside China. Therefore, in face of severe public health emergencies, no country can fight the virus on its own, and working with other countries is essential in dealing with the outbreak.

In the face of the outbreak, China and ASEAN members need to ratchet up their information sharing. These countries should engage in bilateral and multilateral cooperation in such domains as producing medical supplies, detection, diagnosis and treatment, developing drugs and vaccines, in a bid to control the number of people infected by the virus.

In 2003, the Special ASEAN-China Leaders Meeting on SARS was held to respond to the outbreak of that coronavirus. Thursday's special meeting of foreign ministers shows that China and ASEAN attach great importance to the current epidemic. 

As of Wednesday, six countries in the ASEAN bloc had confirmed cases of the disease. The infected people are Chinese or had traveled to the Chinese mainland in recent days. China has the duty to exchange in-depth knowledge and collaborate with ASEAN counterparts to advance joint prevention and control and maintain normal economic and social exchanges. It is also an opportunity for China to shoulder its responsibility as a regional power.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, some overseas forces have repeatedly spread rumors about the outbreak online, and discrimination against Chinese people has been reported. 

A majority of the 10 Southeastern Asian countries have suspended flights to and from China. These moves have considerably affected China's exchanges and cooperation with ASEAN members, especially Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, which share borders with China. The borders and entry points between these ASEAN member states and China have restricted people-to-people exchanges and influenced imports and exports with China.

China hopes to use the special meeting of foreign ministers to carefully explain China's efforts to contain the outbreak, gain the understanding, trust and support of Southeast Asian countries and ease or erase their biased perception and unnecessary panic, and help guide them to prevent and control the epidemic in a proper way. 

China wants members of the bloc to fully respect the professional recommendation made by WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization, and objectively deal with the outbreak by making rational decisions.

China expects members of ASEAN, especially the nations that border China, will soon resume normal economic and people-to-people interaction with China under the premise of ensuring personnel security, and effectively preventing and controlling the outbreak.

China and ASEAN can take this opportunity to deepen their cooperation in public health. In addition to mutual exchanges, China can provide some advanced public health technologies, such as infectious disease surveillance networks, to countries with weak healthcare mechanisms to help bolster their standard operating procedures.

In terms of preventing and controlling the epidemic, the two sides can implement coordination in many fields. They can ramp up clinical cooperation in epidemic prevention, jointly study people who have recovered from the disease, and conduct cooperation in the research and development of testing agents. Over the long term, China and the bloc can collaborate in advancing their capability to cope with emergencies, and cultivate talents specialized in public health.

As the embodiment of a community of shared destiny for humanity, cooperation between China and ASEAN over the COVID-19 has sent a signal to the world that China and ASEAN will take firm step to jointly combat the virus, safeguard people's health and improve regional public health mechanisms. By working together to overcome this public health emergency, relations between China and ASEAN, and between China and individual ASEAN countries, will be further improved.

The article was compiled by Global Times reporter Lu Yuanzhi based on an interview with Bi Shihong, a professor at Center for China's Neighbor Diplomacy Studies and School of International Studies, Yunnan University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
Newspaper headline: Beijing offers epidemic insights to ASEAN