Supportive neighbors show they care

The novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, infecting more than 6.4 million people in more than 210 countries and regions. Over the past four months, China has been fighting against the pandemic, taking the most comprehensive, rigorous and thorough prevention and control measures, and making great efforts and sacrifices. China has made important achievements in its fight against the pandemic, basically halting the spread of the virus in the country, and it has become one of the first countries in the world to bring the pandemic largely under control.

China is fully aware of the difficulties in fighting against the pandemic and is keenly aware of the sufferings that people around the world are experiencing. China has actively carried out international cooperation to combat the pandemic, demonstrated its sense of responsibility as a major country, and worked with the people of other countries, including Mongolia, to jointly combat the virus. This has played an indispensable role in safeguarding international public health security and opened a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

During the most difficult period of China's fight against the pandemic, many countries, including Mongolia, provided China with valuable help and support. We will always remember and cherish this friendship. On Feb 27, Mongolian President Khaltmaa Bhattulega paid a special visit to China to express sympathy and support for China's fight against the pandemic, becoming the first foreign head of state to visit China after the outbreak. President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang met with him respectively. President Battulega's donation of 30,000 sheep to China on behalf of the Mongolian people has become a hot topic among Chinese netizens.

The Mongolian president, prime minister, foreign minister and leaders of the ruling and opposition parties sent letters to leaders of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government respectively, expressing condolences on the pandemic and highly appraising the effective measures taken by the Chinese government to control the pandemic and treat the sick.

So far, the Mongolian government, political parties, military, police, overseas students in China, and people in the fields of religion, business, tourism have donated more than 6 million yuan ($842,000) to China's fight against the pandemic. The Mongolian society is highly concerned about the pandemic in China and has expressed sympathy. An elderly grandmother delivered her donation to the embassy in the wind and snow. Many children drew pictures to express their good wishes and Mongolian students in China made videos to cheer for Wuhan. These touching actions showed the profound friendship between the Chinese and Mongolian people and set a good example of neighboring countries helping one another.

With the spread of the virus in the world, the local pandemic prevention pressure in Mongolia is increasing. China returned the favor by providing aid to Mongolia within its capacity while doing its own pandemic prevention work well. The Chinese government, armed forces, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, enterprises and non-governmental charities donated a large amount of urgently needed pandemic prevention materials to Mongolia, including negative pressure ambulances, masks, testing reagents and medical equipment, which greatly relieved the urgent need of Mongolia's pandemic prevention work. The Chinese embassy, Chinese enterprises and overseas Chinese in Mongolia have made active contributions to the pandemic prevention work in Mongolia. The foreign ministries of the two countries established a joint prevention and control mechanism and held the first videoconference on April 21. Chinese health experts have held videoconferences with Mongolian experts on many occasions to share their experience in COVID-19 diagnosis, medication, clinical nursing and critical care, and answered the questions of their Mongolian counterparts on the spot.

It is encouraging to note that, with concerted efforts, there have been no cases imported from each other. The prevention and control measures taken by Mongolia have been effective, the health and safety of the people have been well protected, and all imported cases have been properly isolated and treated.

China and Mongolia have understood, sympathized and supported each other in the fight against COVID-19. This has fully demonstrated the high level of the China-Mongolia comprehensive strategic partnership and further consolidated and deepened the friendship between the two peoples. The close cooperation in the fight against the pandemic has enabled Mongolia to have a better understanding of the concept of building a China-Mongolia community with a shared future.

China is ready, on the basis of the current cooperation, to continue to work together with Mongolia, explore pandemic prevention and control under the condition of recovered and normalized bilateral economic and trade personnel exchanges, support the development of the Mongolian social and economic recovery and take concrete actions to explain how permanent neighbors care for each other, contributing to community with a shared future for mankind with positive energy. We believe that with the concerted efforts of all countries, the world will surely overcome the pandemic at an early date.

The author is the Chinese ambassador to Mongolia. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.