The Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) has become a major event affecting the world since the end of 2019. Due to both the disease’s characteristics and the complicated social and economic context against which the outbreak occurred, it has had a far-reaching impact on the development of China. China found itself first on the front line against COVID-19, which can be regarded as an “Encounter War”, and adopted decisive measures and basically brought the epidemic under control after identifying the virus’ features. However, given COVID-19’s development into a global pandemic, the epidemic is not expected to end in the short term, and has become a common crisis faced by “a Community of Shared Future for Humankind”.

The global economy has already been severely buffeted by the epidemic. With continued spread of the disease, countries have been downgrading their economic outlook and a global economic recession has become a high probability event, possibly leading to further deterioration in the external environment and adding pressure on China’s development. Furthermore, it should also be noted that the economic fundamentals of each country are shifting to pessimism. Each country has enacted different measures with different focuses, which has compounded uncertainty for global economic recovery.

After making huge efforts to be the first country to control the epidemic, China took the initiative by sharing its anti-epidemic experience with the world and stepping up the production of anti-epidemic materials to supply to the world. However, a new and shared global challenge lies in spurring economic recovery while controlling the epidemic. In this regard, China has continuously explored new models and became the first country to see a full economic recovery and explore valid models and experience for recovery.

In the past two decades, large-scale epidemics have occurred one after another, at a rate of almost once every 5 years. China has been severely hit by SARS and COVID-19. The accelerated occurrence of new viruses and increased chance of wide contagion mean that large-scale epidemics may become a periodic test for human society. Countries must formulate strategies to deal with this issue.

From the perspective of development, to develop “a highly resilient society” that systematically withstands and mitigates crises will become a common requirement of the global economic community going forward. China has a responsibility to explore successful roadmaps and models for developing “a highly resilient society”, both for the world and China’s own sustainable development. A highly resilient society should possess three building blocks: response, ability to withstand pressure, and sustainability, and these building blocks should be further strengthened in the economy, healthcare, public well-being, communication and digitalization sectors.

COVID-19 has become a “key test” for the integrated response ability of each country. As a pioneer in confronting this test, China learned a series of successful lessons while identifying some issues and drawbacks. Based on four key sectors and 12 dimensions of developing “a highly resilient society”, we conducted an overview of China’s response to COVID-19. Overall, China adopted resolute and systematic measures which reflect its highly efficient abilities to mobilize people from all levels of society to work together, with particular success in terms of the innovative economy, emergency facility development, guarantee of everyday supplies, digital platform etc., and provided helpful lessons for the world. Meanwhile, during this epidemic, China also exposed some existing shortcomings in the economy, healthcare, public well-being, and communication and digitalization, which should become the key focus of measures in the next phase.

Download the full report：Managing Through the Global Crisis and Building a Highly Resilient System