Editor's note: Timothy Kerswell is a research fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen). He lived in Macao for seven years, working as an assistant professor at the University of Macao. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN. 

Every time there is a minor outbreak of COVID-19 in China, it is accompanied by another outbreak of a more malignant disease, a crop of Western reporters, think-tankers and academics publishing articles, cheerleading COVID-19 and slandering China's response to it.

Driven to despair by the reality that China and its political system have represented the most successful response to COVID-19 in the world, they rationalize attacks on the very foundations of China's response and its zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19. It is a strange and envious mindset that needs to spin the success of others into failure, which is the reality of Western liberalism today.

One of the absurd news reports recently is by Sophia Yan, a Beijing-based correspondent for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. She asserts that China is a "surveillance state," the world's biggest manufacturer and trading country, which wants to close itself off from the outside world, holding xenophobic views that foreigners might carry the coronavirus. This is an example of the usual nonsense that sells well in the West, which, however, is new to me, a foreigner living in China for years.

Much of the reasoning in Yan's article reveals dangerous liberal fundamentalism. Instead of learning lessons from China, she appears to deny every accomplishment of the state when dealing with COVID-19. This line of thinking is why the major liberal democracies have horrendously failed to curtail the pandemic. They're also likely to fail when confronted with any other public challenge that requires people to slightly get out of their own way for the sake of a greater good.

COVID-19 didn't read the Magna Carta (the Great Charter of Freedoms), nor does it care about the Western obsession with limiting government power and guaranteeing individual freedom at all costs.

During the pandemic, China has rightly discouraged travel. It's not the only country to do this. Liberal democratic Australia, for example, runs a quota system for returning nationals and even a travel ban on people leaving the country unless a valid justification is provided.

The curbing of non-essential travel is a valid response to the international public health situation, and should be uncontroversial. Roughly a year and eight months into the pandemic, it is stunning that anyone would argue otherwise.

Next on her list of targets is China's contact tracing system. For the uninitiated, in China there's a health code that you have on your phone or access via WeChat, which is tied to your phone number. It stores information like when your last nucleic acid test was or when/whether you've been vaccinated.

If it's green you can go anywhere by showing people your health code at certain control points like entrances to a mall, a hospital, and even your workplace. If it isn't, you will be denied entry, and need to follow public health directives.

It's a terrific system that enables rapid and effective contact tracing, and encourages regular testing, both critical to pandemic management. It works because it's a universal system. Only in the liberal universe can an obsession with individual freedom extend to being offended at having an app on your phone and prioritizing your freedom of movement over the safety of the society.

Yan even identified a problem with the requirement of quarantine by public health officials. I've personally been quarantined twice in China – once in June 2020 when I moved from Macao to Hong Kong, and then again in April 2021 from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.

Nobody can enjoy time spent in isolation. But it is the height of lunacy to suggest that this is an unnecessary curb on people's freedom. Yes, there were security cameras and control systems outside my room. Yes, I'm glad there were. Australia where I'm originally from is notorious for its mismanagement of quarantine hotels, which endangered public health, and in comparison to that, I'm glad that China adopts resolute measures even when I'm subject to them.

Most people follow the rules and comply with public health directives. However, COVID-19 and in particular, the recent Delta variant underlines the point that it only takes a small number to cause major public damage, which necessitates the strict control measures that China has adopted.

Inexplicably, this author even invalidated mass public testing. To date, I'm happy to reveal that I've tested negative for COVID-19 over 20 times since coming to the Chinese mainland.

Do I enjoy standing in line in the hot summer of Shenzhen only to have someone swab my nose and throat? Of course not. Is this mild inconvenience less important than broad public health objectives? Of course, it is.

So like everyone else, when I'm notified that mass testing is required, I go and stand in the line and get my test, of which the results and records will be stored on the health code app. I'd like to imagine that this would sound reasonable to most people, but in the liberal mind, this is apparently another bad thing that China does.

When most liberal democracies have cumulative case numbers in the millions, China is yet to cross 100,000 cases. When most of these countries witness deaths in hundreds of thousands, China has yet to cross 5000.

I'm glad I live in China, the country which most successfully responded to the greatest public health challenge of our age. I'm glad the government puts public health first, at the cost of individual inconvenience, especially at the expense of the empty abstract principles of liberalism.

China quashed its initial outbreak of COVID-19 in a matter of months, and also contained the Delta variant in a matter of weeks. Too bad for the critics.

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