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The new coronavirus pandemic has dramatically worsened relations between the United States and China, which were no longer the best.
In early 2020 there was room for optimism when both signed the first phase of the trade agreement, which aims to end the tariff war between the two largest economies on the planet. But that sentiment was quickly overcome by the diplomatic crisis brought on by the new coronavirus.
One of the first signs of friction came when the Chinese government criticized the White House’s decision to prevent Chinese flights from entering US territory, classifying it as prejudiced and exaggerated. This occurred in late January, when the world was still about to discover the size of the challenge posed by the little virus.
It was also at the beginning of the epidemic that a theory began to circulate in the United States that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory (something that even US government intelligence does not consider) or that it spread to the population after an accident. in a Wuhan Laboratory. This second hypothesis was raised by Republican Senator Tom Cotton in mid-February.
The Chinese retaliated. Using its extensive arsenal of state media, the Xi Jinping government, without any evidence, claimed that the virus was the work of the United States. On March 12, the deputy director and spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, said on his Twitter account that the “United States Army may have brought” the coronavirus to Wuhan City, the epicenter of the pandemic. . A message that was clearly addressed to the internal audience and whose objective was to find a culprit for the problems that the Chinese government itself had created.
In this story, there was a division within the Chinese Communist Party, something rare to observe in public. While Zhao unleashed this conspiracy theory, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, completely rejected the hypothesis. Discovering the origin of the virus “is a job for scientists, not diplomats or journalists, because this speculation will not help anyone,” Cui said.
The discussion about the origin of the virus, however, did not end there. On the one hand, the United States said it was investigating the possibility that the new coronavirus had infected a human for the first time in an accident at Wuhan’s laboratory. On the other hand, the Chinese sent a signal that they are not comfortable with the discussion about the origin of the virus by ordering that all research papers related to the subject be handed over to the Ministry of Science before being published.
There have been other diplomatic clashes between the United States and China in the past four months. The most emblematic of them is perhaps the use of the term “Chinese virus” by US officials and by President Donald Trump himself. Pressure from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to declare Sars-CoV-2 as the “Wuhan virus” has prevented the world’s seven most developed countries (the Group of Seven) from signing a joint statement on the pandemic on March 24.
During this period, the diplomatic crisis related to American and Chinese journalists also emerged. On March 2, the United States officially launched 60 Chinese journalists from its territory. This decision, which affected journalists employed in the Chinese state media, was already being considered even before the pandemic, due to the Chinese propaganda machine with an anti-American bias. In disproportionate retaliation, 15 days later, the Chinese government expelled journalists from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, publications not related to the US government.
More recently, China has become the hub of a disagreement between the White House and the World Health Organization. Trump has announced the temporary suspension of funds to the WHO while the US government. USA It assesses the role the organization has played in responding to the pandemic, and also demanded more transparency from China regarding its coronavirus data, which is becoming increasingly unreal compared to the much larger numbers presented in Western democracies. like Italy, France, Spain and the United States.
In the WHO crisis, China sided with the organization, defending multilateralism and, once again, rivaling the United States.
Who strengthens this fight: the United States or China?
International policy analysts agree that both governments were wrong to conduct the Covid-19 crisis, obviously not to the same extent.
China silenced doctors who first warned of the disease. An Associated Press report revealed that President Xi Jinping already knew that the coronavirus was transmitted between humans six days before alerting the population, allowing Covid-19 to spread. Official channels have spread misinformation. The Communist Party continued to silence Xi’s critics and is suspected of interfering with the work done by scientists.
This is public knowledge and will undermine China’s efforts to capitalize on political influence, especially now that the country says it has overcome the first wave of the epidemic and is helping other nations fight the disease by sending teams and doctors abroad. Even that goodwill was criticized, after some European countries complained about the quality of some tests and masks that had been bought in China.
On the other hand, the Asian country can gain global influence by positioning itself as aid, while the United States is stopping the export of health items as it goes through the health crisis. This should occur primarily in developing and economically distressed countries, with which China already has a relationship through the Belt and Road Initiative (also known as the Silk Road economic belt).
With $ 3 trillion in international reserves, China is in a position to lend to troubled governments. On March 18, for example, the China Development Bank responded to a request from the Sri Lankan government and signed a $ 500 million loan with the country that will be repaid in ten years.
“Chinese national leaders, the Chinese government and related financial institutions, in their efforts to combat the new coronavirus epidemic, have actively responded to Sri Lanka’s urgent financial and anti-epidemic needs and have taken special measures as soon as possible,” he said. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.
However, the financing power for other governments is limited, as Kelsey Broderick, a specialist in macroeconomics and economic trends in China, wrote to Eurasia Group, a US consultancy. He recalled that Chinese exports are falling due to the coronavirus and that the Chinese may not pay much attention to aggressive loans to other countries.
“For now, China is working hard to defend the multilateral system that exists in the world and will not try to replace institutions like the IMF,” he wrote, adding that China wants to avoid loans to low-paid governments like Venezuela.
The technology dispute, which revolves around the 5G network, is another example of how China could win after the pandemic, said Jude Blanchette, director of the Reconnecting Asia project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Washington-based tank.
The coronavirus crisis did not stop the expansion of investments in 5G within China; on the contrary, he accelerated it, at Xi’s own request. According to Blanchette, the same should happen in countries with which China has strong economic ties, through investments by state and private companies with a strong connection to the Chinese government, such as Huawei.
“Compared to the major transportation and energy projects that dominated BRI’s early years, information and communication technology projects are generally lower cost, easier to deliver, and easier to monetize. These attributes make them less risky and more attractive to investors, “wrote the researcher.
Although the effort is not economically significant for China economically, it is highly relevant in the international political game. The country’s battle with the United States over 5G is already well known, and the pandemic, according to Blanchette, may offer new opportunities for China’s rise as a technological power and global provider of digital infrastructure, especially in countries. emergent
So does this mean that China would benefit from the epidemic that started on its own territory?
Unfortunately, the answer is unclear at this time, but there are a number of questions that challenge this conclusion.
For example, countries with better economic conditions tend to be less receptive to Chinese products after this crisis. European leaders have already criticized the way China responded to the pandemic, especially for the lack of transparency and the attempt to use the crisis as a way to make political profits at the expense of the United States and the European Union.
As Rush Doshi, director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative, argued, “China wants to claim leadership in the global response to the coronavirus,” but “covering up the virus and blatantly lying about its origins complicates the effort.”
Another fact to keep in mind: the pandemic can cause companies to leave China.
William Reinsch, a CSIS investigator who was a member of the US Economic and Security Review Committee. USA And China in the US Congress. USA For years, he explains that the withdrawal of factories from China will not be a mass movement, but something to consider by companies that have a supply chain there.
“By forcing production shutdown in many parts of the country to deal with the coronavirus, the Chinese government forced Western companies to reevaluate their presence there, even if they had not yet begun to do so,” Reinsch wrote in an article published in April 2.
These companies can follow what China has been doing for a few years: create plans to make the production chain less dependent on the outside. Huawei, which is at the center of the technological dispute between the United States and China, is an example. After being sanctioned by the United States, the telecommunications giant has drastically reduced its dependence on foreign providers.
Japan is already considering this idea and has allocated $ 2.2 billion from its economic stimulus package to help domestic manufacturers move production out of China.
“This move clearly poses some long-term challenges for the Chinese economy,” said Brad W. Setser, senior fellow in the area of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of US experts. “Although China is less dependent on manufacturing exports than at the time of the global financial crisis (in 2008), China still has by far the world’s largest industrial surplus, roughly $ 1 trillion,” he said last week in Un event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The leading position of the United States in the world cannot be so easily ruled out, say Asian study experts CSIS Michael Green and Evan Medeiros. However, the country is not at its best.
The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths at this time. This greatly damaged the image of the Donald Trump administration, which at the beginning of the crisis minimized the impact that Covid-19 would have on the country.
Americans have suffered primarily from a lack of protective equipment and a delay in coronavirus screening, which experts say was due to flaws in the White House response to the crisis. Jeffrey Levi, professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, told the BBC that the Trump administration “did not consider pandemic response plans, dating back to the George W. Bush presidency, and failed to fully address its bureaucracy. public health. ” Trump claims that his initial reaction was based on erroneous information transmitted by China and the WHO.
The global leadership of the USA USA It is threatened by the Trump administration’s own stance of prioritizing internal problems at the expense of those related to international politics, such as various attempts to decrease the number of US soldiers abroad. The rejection of multilateral organizations and agreements, such as the WHO, and the erosion of the relationship with European allies also do not help to position the United States as a world leader in the response to the new coronavirus, perhaps there is not even interest from the White House.
But as Green and Medeiros wrote, the power of the United States “rests on a lasting combination of material capabilities and political legitimacy.” According to them, there is little sign that the pandemic is causing a rapid and permanent change in power in favor of China.
“It is essential that the United States restore competent leadership in this pandemic at all levels,” they wrote. “The world clearly needs a global system for surveillance, screening, and drug response. So far, China’s rhetoric and diplomacy have yielded limited gains, but the United States and its allies must remain vigilant so that Beijing does not further expand its role in global governance and institutional design, at a time when Washington is withdrawing. . “
In fact, the United States is beginning to help partner countries through its federal agencies. On April 17, for example, the United States government provided more than $ 32 million in funding to support the response to Covid-19 in the Pacific Island countries.
Days before, the US Department of State. USA He had said in a note that “the US government leads the world’s humanitarian and health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, even as we fight the virus at home.”
In the statement, the department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) say they have so far committed nearly $ 508 million in emergency, humanitarian and financial assistance. “This funding will support critical activities to control the spread of this disease, such as rapid public health, water and sanitation information campaigns, and infection prevention and control in health facilities,” said Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokesman. Aid goes to several countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, which includes Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, among other countries, but not Brazil.
For Elizabeth Economy, director of Asian studies at the CRF, neither China nor the United States deserves consideration for a post-pandemic leadership role. “They have both failed with their own people and with the rest of the world,” he said.
“Other nations exemplify the kind of leadership needed in the face of this crisis, notably Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Unfortunately, none of them have the political, economic, and military means to lead the long term globally. The only question that What remains now is whether China or the United States will emerge in the post-crisis moment to demonstrate another quality of great leadership: the ability to learn, adapt and improve. “
Where is the relationship going?
There is room for understanding between China and the United States. Although diplomatic communication is difficult between the two countries, the leaders have frequent conversations. Trump publicly praised Xi on several occasions and avoided calling the coronavirus a “Chinese virus” when referring to the president of the world’s second-largest economy.
One of the reasons for this precaution by the US President may be related to the possibility of maintaining an open channel of communication with China and reaching an understanding regarding phase two of the trade agreement between the countries, which is favorable to USA USA And that Trump can be used as campaign material.
In an optimistic stance, the trade association with China and an understanding with the country will also be important, as both recovered from the unprecedented economic crisis that is unfolding.
On the other hand, the issue may become less relevant as nationalist sentiment in the United States is growing in relation to trade, which may sink the second stage of the trade agreement, which will also depend on China’s commitment and compliance capacity. . The first step in the midst of the economic crisis, especially regarding the promise to increase purchases of American agricultural products.
We must also remember that there will be presidential elections in the United States in November. Although Democrat Joe Biden, a candidate who will run against Trump, also criticizes China: On February 25, in a debate, he called Xi a “thug” who “has a million Uighurs” in concentration camps. American strategy must change if a new president comes to occupy the White House after 2021.
