LONDON, March 4 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government has been "extraordinarily effective" in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, offering valuable experience for western countries that see increasing threat of the novel coronavirus, said British scholar and political commentator Martin Jacques.
The way China tackling the outbreak is very thoughtful once the Chinese government realized how serious the situation was, Jacques, senior fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"Here was a virus that was new. They had no idea what its characteristics were and what it might do. And obviously there's no vaccine for it. So all you can do is to try and contain the spread of it, to reduce human contact and so on," said Jacques, adding that the declining infected cases in China shows that "the problem has been quarantined and restricted."
Chinese health authority said Wednesday it received reports of 119 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus infection on the Chinese mainland. In total, 49,856 patients had been discharged from hospital by the end of Tuesday on the Chinese mainland.
The scholar, also the author of the best-selling "When China Rules the World", said the Chinese governing system plays a significant role in containing the virus spread.
"The Chinese government's governing system is in my view very impressive. It's capable of thinking big and thinking strategically. And it's capable of mobilizing the people and the resources," said Jacques.
He emphasized China's governing system "is not just the contemporary feature of China, but historical feature of China, that has great respect in the population for the government, and it needs the people to respond actively to what the government's suggesting."
In the face of the rising threat of the virus on a global scale, the scholar called on all nations to work together to combat the virus.
"The virus knows no boundaries nor borders, it is a question for the whole of humankind to confront with. We can only solve this problem by cooperation and collaboration," he said, adding that it is something that requires global action like climate change.
On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing that China honored its commitment to international cooperation in the fight against novel coronavirus in an open, transparent and responsible manner.
The Foreign Ministry and the National Health Commission jointly held a video conference on Tuesday with health experts from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Turkmenistan and the secretariat of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Peking University First Hospital shared with the attendees China's experience in the prevention, control and treatment of COVID-19. Earlier, China and the European Union also held two video conferences on the prevention and control of COVID-19, said Zhao.
Meanwhile, on the economy front, Jacques expressed confidence in the resilience of the Chinese economy despite the COVID-19 outbreak.
"It (The Chinese economy) is going to recover and probably bounce back quite strongly once we get through the worst of it," he said.
