The pandemic continues to cause disruption in society across the world, and despite the seemingly universal desire to end the precautions, China and the U.S. have done little in setting an example for the world to follow.

The predictable downward revision cycle for the global economic outlook has officially begun. That’s the message from the semi-annual World Economic Outlook just released by the International Monetary Fund, which reinforces earlier revisions from several prominent private forecasting teams.

The current lockdowns in China have the potential for substantial disruptions of supply chains and business on a global scale.

The world is largely off track in terms of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But China’s Global Development Initiative and Belt and Road Initiative can work together for a better future.

In early March, Premier Li Keqiang announced that China is targeting GDP growth of “about 5.5%” this year. That would be ambitious even without Russia’s war against Ukraine and the attendant increases in global energy and food prices. Back in January, for example, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the Chinese economy would grow by only 4.8% in 2022. And in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic, GDP increased by just under 6%.

Unlike Britain and the United States, China actually walks the walk of human rights. It doesn’t merely talk the talk. What the Chinese mainland has taught us is that the zero-COVID policy is the most effective solution for avoiding deaths.

There are and will continue to be differences between China and the United States. This is typical of humans, as any family knows. But the world needs China and the United States to be working together, marshaling and complementing their respective strengths.

The global pandemic no longer holds the world hostage as it did in 2020 - yet it’s effects and deadly consequences are still present along with the lingering threat of war and economic collapse.

The new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, is throwing a wrench into the recovery of an already strained global supply chain.

Containment or isolation of the Chinese economy makes little sense because it means all countries will lose out from the reversing of globalization.