This year's sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee are about to be held. These will be the first full-duration sessions since 2019, as the two annual sessions over the past three years were necessarily truncated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back in 2020, after the first outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the country was identified in Wuhan, the two sessions were delayed for two months while the epidemic situation in the city and surrounding areas was brought under control. But in May, NPC deputies and CPPCC National Committee members gathered in Beijing for their deferred discussions, although these and the sessions in the following two years naturally had the urgency of the public health emergency to contend with.

But by adhering to a science-based response to the epidemic, and repeatedly adjusting and optimizing the prevention and control measures over the past three years in light of the evolving epidemic situation, the country has withstood the impact of five rounds of global COVID-19 outbreaks and effectively handled more than 100 cluster outbreaks. This flexible, but resolute response effectively prevented widespread infections with the original strain of the virus and the Delta variant, which were more pathogenic than subsequent variants and successfully prevented the epidemic from becoming a tragedy on the scale of that which has unfolded in the United States and other parts of the world.

Putting people's lives and health first has always been China's primary consideration in formulating policies in response to the pandemic, and that has included providing a helping hand to other countries. By April 8, 2020, the day when the lockdown on Wuhan was lifted, China had already supplied the world with over 18,000 life-support machines, and by December 2021, it had already donated 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses. Also crucially, with the epidemic contained in the country, China was able to act as the economic engine for the world at a time when Western economies were struggling.

With the relatively milder Omicron variant becoming the dominant strain of the virus at the end of last year, China made the quick and firm decision to relax its pandemic control measures and there is worldwide expectation that its unleashed development vitality can spur the global economic recovery.