Western smear Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Whatever China does in its battle against COVID-19 is wrong under the prism of Western media. Those who once denounced China's strict approach to epidemic prevention and control are now hyping up the consequences of opening up. Headlines such as "The disastrous implications of lifting Zero-COVID in China" are flooding on Western social media platforms. Bloomberg is more dramatic, articulating that "a full reopening could see 5.8 million in ICU" in China and that "there's no way an uncontrolled wave of infections can be managed."

It is hard to believe that Bloomberg published such a prognosis with a straight face. China's 20 measures, recently fine-tuned and adjusted to optimize the epidemic response, do not mean loosening prevention and control against the virus, less a lift of COVID-19 restrictions or "lying flat" in the COVID-19 fight. It aims at making the response to the virus more targeted and science-based, maximizing the protection of people's safety and health, and minimizing the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development. 

However, some Western forces tend to write off all the efforts and achievements China has made to rein in the virus, while putting the shortcomings under scrutiny to provoke confrontation and stir up chaos on Chinese soil. For them, it would be best if China's development slows down or stagnates. 

Due to ideological differences, it has become almost an instinct of Western countries and media to criticize communist governments with an aim to subvert the latter with color revolutions, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times. Shen added that in the major power game, the objective facts on differences between China and the West, when it comes to handling the virus, have driven the West into a state of anxiety. They are thus eager to capture, exaggerate and point fingers at all negative issues they could find in China's epidemic control procedures. 

This is like how Washington fans the flames in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Some forces in the US and other Western countries can't accept that China has the capacity to adjust its policy in a more flexible way and contain the virus, observers noted. 

Let the data speak for itself. As of press time, China's total COVID-19 death toll is a little more than 5,200. But in the US, 1.09 million people's lives have been claimed by the virus. British scholar John Ross recently made a comparison. He pointed out that China's population is 4.3 times that of the US. In order to see what would be the impact of the US COVID-19 policy in China, one should multiply US statistics by 4.3. It means if China had the same death rate as that of the US, 4.7 million Chinese people would be dead, said Ross.

In other words, it is Chinese policy that saved many people, as well as their families. 

Every step on the way of China's epidemic prevention and control is explored by China itself. And Chinese people have seen that China's approach has protected people well over the past two years. This is enough for Chinese people to cast a cold eye on arrogant Western remarks. The nature of Western media outlets is political tools, and this has long been unveiled. Their target of judging China is setting stumbling blocks on the country's development path. 

China's COVID-19 response measures are never static, but are under constant adjustments for the better due to the changing situation. In the process, China's priority is about how to manage its own things well, rather than how others judge it. Whatever policies China adopts on coping with the virus are based on three criteria: science, China's interests, and whether Chinese people are protected.