Guaranteeing Medical Supplies in an Orderly and Effective Manner During Anti-Epidemic Fight

II. Focusing our resources and doing everything possible to raise our domestic production and supply capacity

The ability to pool resources behind major undertakings is one of the clear advantages of China's state system and national governance system, as well as an important tool that will help us win the fight against the epidemic. Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, China has gradually cultivated this institutional advantage in the process of implementing major strategies, driving forward major scientific and technological breakthroughs, developing major projects, and preventing and controlling major disasters. Since the current outbreak began, the entire country has been working to overcome problems such as shortages in staff, equipment, and materials as well as overstretched funding. We have done everything possible to get medical supply companies back to work and expand production capacity, and offered support to enterprises in other industries in expediting the process of switching over their production in order to meet production targets as soon as possible. Through these efforts, production capacity and output of protective suits and N95 masks multiplied by double digit factors in the space of just 20 days, with suppliers racing against the clock to get these items to the front lines. This further demonstrates the awesome strength of the Chinese system.

The ability to pool resources behind major undertakings is fundamentally dependent on the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC.

The leadership of the CPC is the most essential characteristic of Chinese socialism, and the greatest strength of the Chinese socialist system. At the core of these attributes is the need to uphold the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee. Success belongs to those who share, from top to bottom, in one purpose. Acting as a central command post, the CPC Central Committee has conducted a number of meetings and put forward plans in a timely manner. It has made clear that Party committees and governments at all levels must firmly abide by the Central Committee's unified direction, coordination, and management, and follow orders to the letter. All government departments and local authorities must perform their respective functions, work in coordination with each other, take urgent action, and devote all of their energy in order to ensure that efforts to guarantee medical supplies proceed in an orderly and effective fashion. This will create the conditions necessary for bringing about a turning point in the fight against the epidemic. It has been proven through practice that stronger leadership from the CPC generates greater enthusiasm on all sides. In the process of raising our capacity to guarantee medical supplies, enterprises managed by the central government have acted as the major force driving the effort forward, countless private companies have answered the Party's call and offered to help without asking for anything in return out of a sense of responsibility and national pride, and a large number of foreign-funded enterprises have leveraged their strengths to offer active and compassionate support. Most important, however, are the vast numbers of workers who have diligently performed their tasks day and night, demonstrating the political consciousness and indomitable will of the working class. 

The ability to pool resources behind major undertakings is manifested in the use of extraordinary measures to respond to emergencies or unique circumstances.

The emergency methods that have been adopted to rapidly step up effective production enabled a large number of qualified enterprises to receive production license quickly by bypassing established procedures. In addition, in order to ensure that enterprises are running at maximum output, we have taken steps to reinforce seamless linkage throughout entire industrial chains, and done everything possible to boost the supply of urgently needed equipment and materials such as machines for making masks and melt-blown fabrics. In order to reduce the time it takes for products to leave the factory, we have explored new disinfection techniques that have cut the dissipation period down from seven days to one or two days. We have also rapidly introduced a series of generous fiscal and financial measures to help alleviate the concerns of companies so that they can shift production into high gear. In order to support the expansion of diversified overseas supply channels, we have established dedicated windows for express customs clearance, thereby ensuring that medical supplies do not face any delays. Furthermore, in order to make sure that products procured from abroad arrive in Wuhan on time, we have opened up express overland transport routes and chartered two dedicated postal planes. Finally, in order to ensure that badly needed supplies get to the places that need them the most, we have issued usage guidelines for different areas and levels. This has dramatically increased the efficiency with which medical supplies are used.

The ability to pool resources behind major undertakings demands that we govern the Party with full and rigorous discipline.

This epidemic is a test of our Party's self-governance. Leading officials must align their thoughts and concerns with those of the Central Committee, step up and take command with a willingness to shoulder responsibility, and act creatively in response to emergency situations. They must under no circumstances allow themselves to lose their focus or momentum. Officials must continue to hold short meetings, speak truthfully, and act pragmatically, focusing on addressing problems and coming up with solutions. We should fully leverage the role of community-level Party organizations as outposts on the front lines of the fight, as well as the role of Party members in setting a positive example. We should also strengthen supervision over key tasks so as to ensure that all measures are implemented thoroughly and without compromise. It is important that we keep a close eye on officials working at the forefront of efforts to guarantee supplies, offering commendations and important assignments to those who show outstanding dedication, and giving prompt warnings to those who impede our efforts or shirk their duties.

III. Setting solid foundations for guaranteeing emergency response supplies by expediting efforts to turn China into a manufacturing powerhouse

The manufacturing sector is the backbone of the national economy and the cornerstone of our nation's strength. Through many years of growth, China has developed massive manufacturing capacity and a relatively complete industrial system. It not only has the largest manufacturing sector in the world, it is also the only country that is complete with every industrial category. This unique advantage has set a solid foundation for guaranteeing medical supplies and played a major role in the fight against the epidemic. The facts have proven that it is only possible to build a strong system for guaranteeing emergency response supplies with a strong industrial base. With the fight against the epidemic now in a crucial stage, it is imperative that we promote high-quality development of the manufacturing sector and expedite efforts to turn China into a manufacturing powerhouse, both for supporting a thorough and decisive victory against the epidemic and for resisting the social and economic damage it has caused.

A worker moves quickly to assemble a CT scanner at Kangda Intercontinental Medical Equipment Co., Ltd., which is located in the Meishan Bonded Port Area in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, February 11, 2020. Following the CPC Central Committee's directive to exercise unified leadership, provide coordinated instructions, and take concerted action, numerous companies have spared no effort in guaranteeing the production and provision of medical supplies, thus providing powerful support for winning the fight against the coronavirus epidemic.

PEOPLE'S DAILY / PHOTO BY CHEN ZHANGKUN

We must move faster to bring people back to work and restart production, and strive to fulfill this year's objectives and tasks.

We must thoroughly implement the guiding principles of the CPC Central Committee's meetings on COVID-19 prevention and control and social and economic development. Recognizing that certain medical equipment is still in tight supply, we should push forward the restarting of entire industrial chains, help companies be more flexible in their production, conduct scientific planning of production capacity, ensure that products meet quality standards, and work as quickly as possible to meet relevant medical demands. We must step up efforts to guarantee supplies of drugs to treat the epidemic, following the research and development process closely and working actively to ensure smooth integration with production. Meanwhile, we must implement precise prevention and control tactics tailored to different areas and levels, strengthen measures for stabilizing employment, finance, foreign trade, foreign capital, investment, and performance forecasts, and prevent the operations of industries and telecommunications companies from slipping out of a reasonable range. On the national level, we must move faster to bring companies providing products to the agricultural sector such as fertilizer, plastic sheeting, and farm machinery back to work, and work vigorously to guarantee supplies of daily necessities. We must make it a priority to ensure that key enterprises and segments of the economy that have major influence on global supply chains start producing and supplying again. More specifically, we must work quickly to restart pace-setting industries such as the automotive and electronics industries, and spur the development of strategic emerging industries including 5G networks, integrated circuits, biomedicine, medical equipment, and the industrial Internet. We must advance the launch or re-launch of important projects, and return the construction machinery and raw materials industries to normal operations. We must enhance and expand consumption, and increase investment in new forms of business, bulk consumption, and health industries. Getting small and medium-sized enterprises back to work is a crucial but challenging task. At present, we must focus on prominent problems like cash flow, introduce and implement more aggressive assistance policies, clear out debts owed to small and medium-sized enterprises on a large scale, and help these enterprises address their urgent concerns so that enterprises have greater confidence in doing their business.

We must accelerate high-quality development, and promote overall upgrading of the manufacturing sector.

China is now at a key juncture in which it is transforming its modes of development, optimizing the structure of the economy, and switching to new drivers of growth. As we react to the short-term impacts of the epidemic, we must refrain from returning to the old path of extensive development, and instead maintain our confidence and resolve as we implement the new development philosophy, focus on resolving various imbalances and inadequacies in development, use pressure and challenges as an opportunity to boost momentum, and work hard to capture solid results through taking supply-side structural reform to a deeper level. We must speed up core technological innovations, vigorously implement projects to rebuild our industrial foundations, and make sure that we are well prepared to upgrade these foundations and modernize industrial chains. With a focus on building strategic and holistic industrial chains, we must build platforms for general-purpose technologies such as manufacturing innovation centers, and support regions with a competitive edge in taking the lead to develop advanced manufacturing clusters. We must continue to pursue smart manufacturing, implement the 512 Project combining 5G and the industrial Internet, and accelerate the manufacturing sector's smart, digital, and network-based transformation. With an eye on areas of weakness, we must push forward the campaign to increase the variety, quality, and reliability of consumer products, and strengthen our capacity to guarantee supplies of food and drugs. We must remain on guard against the problem of excess production capacity, speed up development of a green manufacturing system, broadly apply new technologies for clean production and high-efficiency resource recycling, and develop remanufacturing industries and industries that conserve energy and protect the environment. We must give full play to entrepreneurship and craftsmanship, support the small and medium-sized enterprises to become specialized, sophisticated and innovative, and foster champions in their respective domains.

We must build our capacity to guarantee important emergency response supplies and prepare strategic stockpiles.

This epidemic has revealed certain deficiencies and systematic flaws that have existed for a long time in China's capacity to guarantee emergency response supplies. In particular, during the initial outbreak we discovered that there were severe shortages of key health and epidemic prevention supplies, including masks, protective suits, goggles, and medical devices. Coupled with disorganized usage of limited medical resources, this inflicted extreme strain on prevention and control supplies for a period of time. We must bring together our experiences and learn from them, making thorough efforts to fix shortcomings and blind spots, fill in loopholes, and reinforce our systems. We must move quickly to establish systems for checking up on our industrial foundations. More specifically, we must comprehensively and meticulously survey production capacity for important products such as medical supplies, draw up categorized industrial supply chain maps, and set up big data platforms for our industrial foundations and a list of key enterprises, thereby ensuring that we have the information we need to provide effective management. We must augment strategic stockpiles of health and epidemic prevention supplies, adjust the scale and structure of these stockpiles as well as the items included in them through a scientific approach, and translate our strengths in manufacturing into supply capacity, thus ensuring that we have ample supplies when we need them. We must optimize the distribution of our production capacity for key supplies, improve mechanisms for interdepartmental cooperation, conduct overall supervision and dynamic monitoring on a regular basis, and make emergency production more flexible and distribution more effective so that supplies are available quickly and ready for use at critical moments.

(Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, Chinese edition, No. 5, 2020)