Caption: A donation ceremony is held by Chinese People”s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries in Beijing on Thursday. Photo: Lu Yameng/GT

 
China on Thursday donated a batch of supplies worth 3 million yuan ($463,943), including 200 oxygen generators, oxygen cylinders, and 200,000 masks to Pakistan to help the country combat COVID-19, the Global Times learned from the ceremony.

As this year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan, the donation ceremony was an important moment witnessing relations, said Moin ul Haque, the Pakistani Ambassador to China, at the ceremony.

“This donation was a tremendous help to Pakistan in the fight, prevention and control of COVID-19,” the ambassador noted.

The practical help from China to Pakistan, such as donations of supplies and shared experiences in fighting the COVID-19, have fully demonstrated that the Pakistan-China iron brotherhood friendship is unbreakable, Lin Songtian, the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) said at the ceremony. 

Sha Zukang, the President of the China-Pakistan Friendship Association (CPFA), told the Global Times that it only took three weeks to gather the materials and such a donation could not be achieved without the cooperation and hard work of many parties, including medical equipment producers, the CPFA and officials from the Embassy of Pakistan in China.

“The 200 oxygen generators donated this time are mainly used to treat critically ill patients of COVID-19 in Pakistan. One machine can be used to treat three patients at the same time, which means this batch of oxygen generators can save 600 lives at the same time in the country,” Sha noted.

A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed that as of Thursday, Pakistan had registered more than 951,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with cases of death exceeding 22,000.

In the ceremony, Lin criticized the US for politicizing pandemic, saying that “the US government requires US intelligence personnel, rather than scientists, to trace the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and directly point fingers at China, which is the [lie of the century] and will never succeed.”

“Some countries make slanderous remarks that China is carrying out ‘vaccine diplomacy,’ which is an ant of gauging the heart of a gentleman with their own mean measures, and aims at instigating China's relations with other countries,” Sha told the Global Times on Thursday.

Some countries, especially developing countries, do not have the capacity to produce vaccines, and China’s donations are an act of saving lives,” Sha noted.

China’s successful practices have proven that the epidemic can be prevented, controlled, and cured, but the “political virus” cannot solve the “natural virus.” Lin called on the international community to unite and cooperate when implementing global anti-pandemic actions in order to contain and overcome the virus as soon as possible.

In 2015, the leaders of the two countries jointly upgraded China-Pakistan relations to an all-weather strategic cooperative partnership, ushering in a new chapter in the development of bilateral relations.

China has already given two batches of COVID-19 vaccines to the army of Pakistan in February and May, respectively, among which the aid in February was the first batch of vaccine assistance provided by the Chinese government to other countries.