CHINA and South Korea are successful examples of an emergency response to COVID-19 and have established an effective model of cooperation in cross-border prevention and control, Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming said Monday.

“Having been making great sacrifices and great efforts in the fight, China, especially Wuhan, has achieved great results. The international community has also commended the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) efforts in making important progress in combating COVID-19,” Xing said in his signed article to the South Korean daily English newspaper “The Korea Times.”

Xing said the two countries were the first ones to establish a joint prevention and control mechanism to cope with COVID-19, which he called an effective model of cooperation, with close coordination in sectors such as foreign affairs, public health and immigration.

With the effective prevention and control model, there have been no more confirmed cases among Chinese citizens who came to South Korea after Feb. 4, while no imported case to China came from South Korea as of now.

These facts proved that the measures, taken by the two countries, effectively stemmed the spread of the epidemic in China and South Korea, the ambassador noted.

“Regardless of gender, age, race or fortune, no one is exempt from its attack. Virus is the common enemy of mankind,” Xing said in the article titled “COVID-19 — Common enemy of humanity.”

Xing said that the enemy the world is facing today is COVID-19, the official name given by the World Health Organization (WHO). As the world’s largest intergovernmental agency on public health, WHO opposes intentional linkage of the virus and specific countries or regions. And it is also inappropriate to connect the name of a virus directly to any specific country, region or race. “There must be a hidden political purpose behind this stigmatization.”

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said yesterday that his government will double the size of the emergency corporate funding package to 100 trillion won (US$80billion) to help companies surmount the temporary liquidity shortage coming from the COVID-19 outbreak.

Moon made the remarks during the second “emergency economic council” meeting, according to the presidential Blue House. The president-chaired meeting was first held last week, unveiling 50 trillion won worth of financial aid package.

“[The government] will prevent, without fail, companies from going bankrupt because of the shock from COVID-19. Normal and competitive companies will never go out of business due to a temporary liquidity shortage,” Moon said.

Last week’s financial aid package was centered on supporting small companies, microbusiness owners and the self-employed, but the expanded package would involve major companies and even conglomerates, if necessary.

Under the expanded package, 29.1 trillion won worth of emergency funds will be provided for small firms in order to help them maintain business operations.

Loan guarantee will be expanded to 7.9 trillion won, and assistance for loans from state-run lenders worth 21.2 trillion won will be added to the expanded package.

To ease worries the corporate debt market will fall into a credit crunch, 20 trillion won of the bond market stabilization fund will be created for the purchase of corporate bonds and commercial papers. It was double the size created during the 2008 global financial crisis. (Xinhua)