On the evening of April 21, the Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality held a video conference to share the city's experience in fighting COVID-19. More than 60 representatives, including government officials from 26 sister cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, London, and Paris, representatives from United Cities and Local Governments, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI, experts, and scholars, participated in the video conference.

(Source: Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality)

This video conference was held upon the request of sister cities such as Buenos Aires, Rio, Jakarta, and Budapest. After the news of the conference was released, it received widespread attention and positive responses from sister cities. There were cities submitting a request for participation even on the day of the conference.

At the two-hour conference, Yang Peng, Director of the General Office of the Beijing Center for Global Health under the Beijing Center for Diseases Prevention and Control (Beijing CDC), introduced the city's anti-epidemic measures including strict control of imported infection, strengthening community response, and close contact tracing. Li Ang, President of Ditan Hospital, shared his experience with differentiated treatment for mild and severe cases and the use of traditional Chinese medicine in clinical treatment. The representative from the Municipal Development and Reform Commission introduced effective measures adopted by the city to stabilize employment and help companies resume operations, reduce costs and increase liquidity.

Representatives from different countries were very interested in the policies and measures shared at the conference. Representatives from Cologne, Belgrade, the State of Rio de Janeiro, Ulaanbaatar, and Budapest paid special attention to topics such as the protection of the elderly, COVID-19 detection, isolation and quarantine, medical observation, treatment methods, public prevention measures, and economic support policies, and asked Beijing experts many questions concerning these topics. Other representatives also actively exchanged views with each other in the comment area. Participants thanked Beijing for sharing its experience unreservedly, hoping that they would have more opportunities to learn about Beijing's effective policies and measures for epidemic control and resumption of work and production.

Beijing has always been actively sharing its experience with the international community. Prior to this virtual meeting, the Municipal Foreign Affairs Office had invited community officials to participate in the two video conferences held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Health Commission, on which Chinese experts discussed the epidemic with the representatives of Central and Eastern Europe, and of Latin America and the Caribbean, respectively.