Editor's Note: Cheng Dawei is a professor at the School of Economics at China's Renmin University. The article reflects the author's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on Wednesday. Fear has led to the collapse of the stock market and oil market. Fear has expanded from China to Europe, the United States and even the world. But my life, including my work, has gradually moved towards order.

When I returned to Beijing from abroad in early February, I didn't really recognize the threat of the coronavirus and how it influences people. On the day of returning home, I was reunited with my parents and the whole family had a big meal. However, after summing up domestic news, I began to understand the danger and took the initiative to isolate myself the next day.

My university was closed, and I was told that I would only be able to return to campus when my quarantine was finished. I told my school office I needed my hypertension medicine from the university hospital, but was told I could find my medicine from a community drug store. I replied that I understood it was a solution, but I was reporting an issue, as more teachers may face similar problems and the university hospital needed to have a plan to deal with this kind emergency. 

I told my office, the head of the hospital is my friend, but I did not want to trouble him and ask for a personal help. I was talking about a "policy issue." Three days later, my medicine was delivered to my home and the university told me they had issued a policy to offer help for retired teachers getting their regular medicine. I was happy to watch this process.

Then the next issue is how to manage students. Students were all over the country and even around the world, as the university was closed. I needed to consider how they could stay where they were as I restored teaching order. 

At the beginning, some students wanted to find gray zones, not reporting their location, and trying to return to Beijing. I held a WeChat conference, telling them during the epidemic period, quarantine is a rule, and if you break the rule, you will be punished. I told my students, you could enjoy full freedom to read, eat, sleep and do things you like within the law.

As a professor, I am not satisfied with the network of teaching infrastructure at my university. As more professors use online classroom, the more trouble we face. The supporting ability of internet infrastructure is insufficient. Therefore, many professors use Tencent's software to support online classes. There are more than 70 students in my class. It is a huge group, and my online classroom is getting crowded. 

But my students have more skills, and they are born to know how to use the internet. I booked an online conference room, sent the pin number to my students through WeChat, and within five minutes, my students just showed up in the conference room, thanks to the well-developed Chinese internet infrastructure.

Usually, I use Wechat to communicate with my students, send reading materials, and use Tencent conference software for classes. A German student said that his Tencent conference is not good, as the network speed is not fast enough and he could not hear clearly. 

Some students recorded my classes and uploaded them on Baidu cloud, allowing the German student to catch up with his other course mates.

On Wednesday, this German student told us the situation in Italy is getting worse. His hometown is close to Italy. He has arrived in Berlin and lives in his friend's house but he has no money and is looking for a job. 

My students then sent him online wishes. 

I feel my class has established an order. Students attend classes on time, engage in lively discussions, and they are willing to lend a helping hand.

More than this, my entrepreneur friends joined the class. They taught remotely, shared their stories, and these are real case studies.  

Professors teach knowledge, and entrepreneurs complete the last kilometer of docking between knowledge and the real society. No payment, no big welcome ceremony, these business friends just offered their help.

In the face of a pandemic, what can we do as individuals? What can we do as professionals? My class has answered that.

What can we as citizens do? As managers or leaders, what we can do? We discussed a lot of issues during the virus outbreak, we want to know who is going to take the responsibility, the problems of national governance, and we all hope to find a rational solution. This is a bottom-up push. 

As citizens, we show our concerns and our inputs. Whether directly related to the virus or not, if managers or leaders in various fields learn to take responsibility, solve problems and improve governance, then we will find order in the pandemic.

As a citizen of global village, what can we do? One Australian friend sent his video greetings to encourage the Chinese people, and I forward his video to my class. One female student returned from Sweden and shared her experience with the class. 

I joined an artist WeChat group. Since February 1, I have provided 59 public lectures to group members. I took the self isolation time as an opportunity to learn. Public lectures are a kind of open forum, which also stretches and expands ways of learning as we build a new life order. We share pains, escape from fear and enjoy beautiful things.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com)