In May, Gut published online a study from Hong Kong, China, showing that in Asian patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) who are negative for hepatitis B e antigen, discontinuing entecavir according to the Asia-Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) guideline discontinuation criteria can lead to high viral relapse rates, suggesting that nucleoside (acid) analogue (NA) antiviral therapy may need to be applied indefinitely , or until the recognized treatment endpoint, hepatitis B surface antigen negative. In view of this, Professor Hou Jinlin, Chairman of the Infectious Diseases Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, published a special commentary in the Chinese Medical Tribune, “Long-term treatment for chronic hepatitis B is the only way to achieve long-term safety”, introducing the current clinical decisions, major problems, and responses and reflections on antiviral therapy in China. Currently, more than 80% of HBV patients in China choose oral NA antiviral therapy. Although NA can rapidly and effectively inhibit HBV NDA replication (which acts on the reverse transcription part of the HBV replication process), it cannot completely remove the covalent closed-loop DNA (cccDNA) from the hepatocytes, which is the template for replication. Therefore, most patients still need to receive long-term and possibly lifelong antiviral therapy, i.e., as Professor Hou Jinlin concluded, “long-term treatment is the only way to achieve long-term safety”. Indeed, our past “guidelines” and “consensus” have set some criteria for discontinuation of NA therapy for CHB, but through practice and research in recent years, the relapse rate after standard discontinuation is still 40%-90%, which seems to indicate that the current stage of This seems to indicate that the strategy at this stage can only be to achieve “long term safety” through “long term treatment”. Of course, contemporary medicine is not satisfied with this status quo, and many scientists are still exploring their eradication strategies on the one hand, and the clinical significance of hepatitis B surface antigen quantification, hepatitis B core antibody quantification, and other biological markers in the development of individualized discontinuation criteria on the other. Reviewing the progress made in the last 20 years (including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and AIDS, among others), it is believed that in the near future, humans will finally conquer hepatitis B virus infection once and for all.