United Against COVID-19
Just before the Chinese Lunar New Year, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan and later swept through the country. On January 27, the State Council of China announced the extension of the Chinese New Year holiday to February 2, 2020.
February 3 was nominally the country’s first day back at work after the holiday. Fang Jin, Secretary General of CDRF and other Deputy SGs all went back to the office; CDRF staff who stayed in Beijing during the holiday were also back behind desks.
The CDRF has established a disease-prevention and control leading group as required by the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC). To ensure the health and safety of all colleagues, the leading group implement daily health reporting.
Since then CDRF has ramped up work on the prevention and control of the coronavirus.
As a nation-wide public foundation, CDRF has been actively procuring supplies and materials for rural and poverty-stricken areas affected by the epidemic.
Being the organizer of China Development Forum (CDF), CDRF actively shoulders its role as communication platform. Communicating with enterprises home and abroad, CDRF have raised prevention materials for 17 counties in remote rural areas in western and central China.
As a think-tank foundation, many research have also been launched centering around the epidemic with the aim to provide advice to the central government in its decision-making.
In addition, CDRF staffs donated a total of 32,266 RMB, which was remitted to Hubei Charity Federation along with the donations from other departments of the DRC, and used specifically for the prevention and control of the coronavirus.
Secretary General Fang Jin said that ‘At this conjuncture, CDRF staff have all realized that serving the country is serving ourselves. We should leverage our strengths and assist in the prevention and control efforts in impoverished areas, so as to fulfill our mission of promoting economic development and social progress.’
The coronavirus is still raging, the best help CDRF could offer is to exploit our expertise, play our due role as a philanthropy, communication and research platform, to help, and facilitate the prevention and control work in poverty-stricken areas.
As a philanthropic platform: coordinating resources for the most impoverished areas in China
China Development Research Foundation has long been committed to its anti-poverty and child development programs, and has presence in 30 counties in central and western China.Realizing the seriousness of the epidemic, CDRF immediately responded and decided to suspend home visits of the China REACH program during the spring festival, to ensure the safety of the home visitors and the children. CDRF also maintains close communication with relevant counties and follows closely the problem of subsidies issuance caused by the epidemic, continuing support for the home visitors.
CDRF colleagues also take the initiative and try to identify the various needs of the pilot counties.
The results show, unfortunately, that, among the 30 plus pilot counties of our anti-poverty and child development programs, over a hundred suspected or confirmed cases occurred. The situation is dire.
We have also learned that the pilot counties, many of which are state designated poverty counties, have poor public health infrastructure, and are short in supply of prevention and control materials, especially surgical masks, N95 face masks and protective gears.
For example, in mid-February, one case has been confirmed in Xichou County, Wenshan Prefecture of Yunnan Province, but there were only 81 face masks in inventory for the whole county as of February 10th. Clinic director in Qixingguan District of Bijie city, Guizhou Province, told CDRF that people have to reuse disposable masks for several times and N95 respirators were out of stock.
CDRF are aware that, in this battle, the rural areas are the weak links, and thus the priority for epidemic prevention and control, due to their lagging economic and social development and the limited capacity of community-level medical and health institutions.
If the epidemic spreads from urban areas to rural areas, the community-level health care system would be faced with huge challenges.
At this crucial moment, it is our top priority to make the best use of our strengths and aid rural epidemic prevention.
As a communication platform: Mobilize global resources to the impoverished counties
The CDRF is responsible for the organization of the CDF. Over the past 20 years, CDF has always been an important platform for international enterprises to understand China’s political and economic policies.
On February 5, CDF Secretariat postponed the CDF 2020 to be held at a later date. Foreign enterprises have sent letters expressing their support for China's fight against the coronavirus.
Our friendship with enterprises home and abroad over the past 20 years also serves an important role in this epidemic.
Foreign enterprises actively responded to CDRF’s initiative to donate materials to poverty-stricken areas, and exert every effort to raise prevention materials at this moment of shortages.
The enterprises made contact with headquarters and overseas communities to seek global access to prevention and control materials, and CDRF is responsible for distributions.
Before the end of the holiday, significant progress has been achieved.
On January 31, the 1000 N95 masks donated by Prudential to CDRF have been sent to Jimunai county in Altay prefecture in Xinjiang.
On February 1, CDRF received the 3,600 goggles donated by Covestro and then sent them to Ledu District, Qinghai Province and Qixingguan District, Guizhou Province.
On February 2, FMG donated 8,400 N95 respirators to CDRF. The donation was later sent to Sangzhi County, Hunan Province.
After the Spring Festival holiday, on February 6, 2000 bottles of sanitizer gel donated by Bloomage Biotech to CDRF were sent to Xichou County in Yunnan Province, and Youyang County in Chongqing.
On February 11, CDRF received the 10,000 masks donated by C.V. Starr and our staff drove them to Daming County, Hebei Province on the very next day.
On February 15 and 17, assortment of protective materials, 204,275 in total, donated by the Inditex through Tsinghua University Education Foundation arrived at CDRF. they were promptly sent to Youyang County in Chongqing, Zhijin County in Guizhou, Daming County in Hebei, Ledu District in Qinghai, and Huining County in Shaanxi.
On February 19, Covestro donated an additional 6,400 goggles, which have been sent to Youyang County in Chongqing, Suichuan, Jiangxi Province, Xichou County, Yunnan Province and other places.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies participating the CDF also started to leverage their strengths and donate money and materials after learning about the shortage of materials in poverty-stricken areas.
Luye Life Science donated 15,000 latex gloves, 5,000 filter pads, 600 3M comprehensive respirators and 204 bottles of quick-drying liquid hand sanitizer, which would be deliver to Suichuan County, Jiangxi Province.
Grass Capital donated 14000 pairs of latex gloves, which was sent to Ledu, Nimu and Jimunai.
Shangyuan Capital donated 10,000 face masks, which would be send to Qixingguan District in Guizhou Province and Huachi County in Gansu Province.
The 50,000 face masks donated by PCITECH will also be send out soon.
As the prevention and control effort gets tougher and more and more people go back to work, the demand for epidemic prevention materials in different program locations is increasing day by day.
On February 14, in order to raise more funds to assist rural areas in preventing and controlling the coronavirus, CDRF launched a crowdfunding project named "Supporting Rural Epidemic Prevention Work" on Alipay's charity platform.
By February 16, 17:00, the project raised 1084,909.05 RMB, reaching the target in only three days.
Currently, we have purchased 7,000 KF94 masks with the funds raised and sent them to Jianhe in Guizhou Province, Xing County in Shanxi Province, Leibo in Sichuan Province, Guzhang in Hunan Province, Huachi in Gansu Province, Xichou in Yunnan Province, Youyang in Chonqing Province and Zhijin in Guizhou Province, to support the local epidemic prevention work. We will timely publish the usage of relevant funds for public supervision.
As a research platform: Connecting China and the world in this special time
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, the research department of CDRF leveraged its strengths in policy research and contacting domestic and foreign enterprises and community-level units, as well as its role as a think tank.
The research department has carried out 13 epidemic-related projects, including comparison of the public health emergency response capabilities of local governments, study on the fiscal policy of the prevention and control of the coronavirus, evaluation of the Chinese public service system for acute infectious diseases, international cooperation on the R&D of drugs for severe infectious diseases and so forth, among which three are joint or commissioned research.
On February 15, the Bozhi forum, a monthly seminar organized by the CDRF, kicked off online. The forum invited over 60 economists and experts to jointly discuss the economic impact of the epidemic, short-term response and medium - and long-term reform.
(previous session)
Although the 2020 CDF was postponed, the dialogue between CDRF and forum participants around the world never stopped. Under the CDF’s mandate of ‘engaging with the world for the common prosperity’, we have moved the dialogue onto the Internet.
Since February 10, the research department of CDRF carried out interviews with multinational enterprises participating the CDF to assess the impact of the epidemic on their operation, and their needs in the fight against the epidemic. More than 50 enterprises participated in the survey.
Starting from February 7, the CDF Secretariat launched the column "CDF Online" to discuss the impact of the epidemic on Chinese and the world’s economy, the impact on the future political and economic landscape of the world with scholars attending the forum.
Jason Furman, Harvard Professor and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama Administration, Edmund Phelps, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and Professor at Columbia University, Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator at Financial Times, Stephen Roach, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and many other scholars joined in the discussion on the impact of the epidemic on Chinese and the global economy. Relevant articles have been reproduced by Caixin, China Daily and other media.
In addition, the CDRF also organized or partook in several teleconferences, and invited experts and scholars to discuss the current epidemic prevention and control effort, the resumption of production and work, and lessons the coronavirus provides on governance.
