A medical worker registers a patient at a community fever clinic in Shanghai on Sunday. Community fever clinics are being used to relieve pressure on major hospitals. （Photo：CHINA NEWS SERVICE）

With many parts of the country, especially the vast countryside, still awaiting the sweeping round of mass COVID-19 infections to peak, and hospitals in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai still coping with a continuous influx of patients with severe symptoms, the scourge of the pandemic is not yet over.

Nonetheless, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter with each passing day.

The scenes of New Year's Eve celebrations on Saturday night and the increasing numbers of people and vehicles on the streets across the country are unmistakable signs of the country coming back to life.

But the road to full recovery may be long and challenging. Especially as geopolitical hedges are being erected against it. Even as the country opens its arms to re-embrace the rest of the world, what used to be a land of opportunities is now treated as a burgeoning "threat".

But as the past three years of unspeakable hardships have demonstrated, nothing can hold the country back.

In the darkest hours of the past three years, when everything, even lives themselves, appeared to be in limbo, the indomitable spirit of ordinary citizens was evident. In neighborhoods nationwide, residents reached out to each other, supporting each other in times of need. It was people pulling together that saved the country from total paralysis.

This unbowed spirit has been a source of strength and resilience for the nation. And it now holds the key to revving up the recovery of the Chinese economy.

With the government maintaining the continuity and stability of macro policies and enhancing their effectiveness and flexibility, and providing support for small and micro enterprises, people can have confidence in expectations that things are now looking up and give full play to their long-constrained desire to get things back to a pre-pandemic normal.

And as business activities pick up and people regain their courage, willingness and ability to consume, the long-suppressed potential of China's super large domestic market can start to be unleashed again.