2022 has inarguably been a dramatic year. It’s also been an exciting one for journalists.

This is my third year of working at the People’s Daily. Covering China and its engagement with the world for a global audience has been a big part of my day-to-day job. With the year coming to an end, I’d like to take a retrospective look at what has happened during the year and share the story of covering those stories.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Eileen Gu impressed the world by claiming two gold medals and a silver medal for Team China. The 18-year-old free skier’s aspiring yet humble personality not only won the hearts of many Chinese youth, but also spurred many Chinese parents to rethink their way of parenting.

Omicron continues raging across the globe and China is no exception. In the first half of the year, a surge of COVID-19 infections forced local officials in Shanghai to launch citywide mobility restrictions to stem community-level transmission. When the pace of the global financial center slowed down, complex apartment’s “Tuanzhang,” or Group Leader, took on the heroic role of helping residents get food and groceries. Since then, I developed a habit of stuffing my fridge full of instant food, and keeping an extra crate of bottled water at home.

China’s unswerving defense of the one-China principle grabbed the world’s attention. In August, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid her notorious visit to Taiwan, despite strong opposition from the Chinese government. The PLA Eastern Theater Command launched unprecedented live-fire joint exercises around Taiwan island.

“Taiwan” became a trending word on Twitter and Weibo for days. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, foreign media described Chinese netizens angered by Pelosi’s trip as nationalists but made light of her provocation of China’s red line.

A road map for Chinese people to embark on a new journey. The 20th CPC National Congress was held in Beijing from October 16 to 22. The Party congress approved a report delivered by President Xi Jinping.

If carbon pricing sounds alien to you, trust me, you are not alone. By talking with an expert, I learned about the urgency of building a broader carbon trading system on a national level. The lifestyle of reusing, recycling, and reducing waste should be embraced by more people for less carbon dioxide emissions, but frameworks guiding industry also matter.

In a separate article, a quote from my subject made a perfectly compelling argument against worries that China is building a closed economy: “Choosing a closed development path would mean China is willing to cede 80 percent of the global market,” said the expert. “It’s a strategic choice unlikely for any modernizing country.”

A widening global divide. The Russia-Ukraine military conflict has lasted more than 300 days. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) worried Europe with protectionism green subsides worth $369 billion. Mutual trust of the transatlantic alliance saw fractures. Many politicians in the West still view China as a “systemic rival.”

However, there are still sensible voices among Western leaders who openly spoke against the decoupling mentality and called for cooperation.

In November, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz traveled to China with a delegation of senior business executives, becoming the first Western leader to do so after the 20th CPC National Congress.

The expert I interviewed to unravel the significance of the Scholz visit reminded me of the importance of big picture thinking. The Scholz visit is more than a gesture of friendship, it’s also driven by pragmatism: Germany needs China, its top trading partner, for economic complementarity and supply chain stability. And China needs Germany to help quell its Western allies’ unfounded concerns of a rising China on many fronts including 5G technology.

Following the Scholz visit story was my one-week reporting trip to the “Island of Gods.” Humid subtropical weather, natural ASMR made by tides washing over the shore, motorbike riders teeming narrow crooked roads, and streets lined with penjors (a local decoration made from bamboo and coconut fronds for ceremonial purposes) — these were my initial impressions of Bali.

In the shadow of high inflation rates, climate change issues, the energy crisis, supply chain bottlenecks, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine military conflict, world leaders gathered in Bali for the G20 Summit, in an attempt to come up with solutions to these urgent crises.

On the first day of the Bali summit, President Xi Jinping met US President Joe Biden on the sidelines. Before their talks began, the two top leaders shook hands in front of cameras, sparking hopes for the two countries to manage differences and calm tensions. At 5:57 pm, my boss called in to ask me to do a quick analysis of the historical moment.

My colleagues thankfully, pointed me to various sources of information so that I could churn out a script in my hotel room, where the internet connection was annoyingly unstable, under tight deadline. At 10:50 pm, the video got published.

From mid-November to December, China’s COVID-19 policy was undergoing big changes. China cut quarantine time for foreign arrivals down to five days of central quarantine and three days of self-isolation. On December 6, local authorities announced that public venues in Beijing no longer required nucleic test results.

The next day, the State Council released a new 10-point plan, allowing asymptomatic patients and patients with mild symptoms to recover at home and strictly banning arbitrary lockdowns of community compounds. I wrote about the country’s recalibration of its zero-COVID policy, and how it has been pushing for economic recovery.

In the meantime, like many living in Beijing, I caught COVID-19. Fortunately, I only experienced mild symptoms and recovered in a week. When many of us encountered cold medicine shortages and delayed delivery of packages, posts and messages of strangers helping each other on Chinese social media gave us reason to believe that goodwill and resilience shall prevail.

On December 27, the State Council announced foreign arrivals will only need to provide a negative nucleic acid test result within 48 hours starting from January 8 of the coming new year. Searches of international flights and visa on travel apps soared in exponential numbers. What travel destination is on your mind? Pack up and go.

While I’m halfway through the book “Klara and the Sun,” (that should be on my new year’s resolution list), ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chat robot developed by OpenAI, made waves with its sophisticated writing skills. Will AI replace journalists one day? Not so soon in my view. A human angle is often the last piece of puzzle for good reporting.

Just as the term “goblin mode” became Oxford’s word of the year, and “quiet quitting” is commonly seen in workplaces in the US, the young generation in China used a similar term, “lying flat,” to voice their rejection of hustle culture.

Stretching yourself too thin is unnecessary. But we don’t need an expert to remind us “lying flat” and “goblin mode” will not fix problems for us once and for all. Make no mistake. We are entitled to take comfort in a temporary getaway. It is better to return to the boxing ring and face the game after we gather enough strength.

It was indeed a year of challenges. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We are making it through.