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President Trump attacked China as the villain of the coronavirus on Tuesday in a spirited United Nations speech, praising its own actions in the pandemic and demanding that the global organization hold “the nation that unleashed this plague on the world” accountable.
Trump’s speech, made through a pre-recorded video before a General Assembly that was drastically reduced due to the pandemic, was followed by a recorded speech by President Xi Jinping of China, who called the coronavirus a crisis shared by all. Without any hint of regret, Xi described his nation of 1.4 billion people as having acted responsibly to combat Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
“Any attempt to politicize the issue or stigmatize it must be rejected,” Xi said.
Together, the speeches of the US and Chinese presidents, broadcast from the world’s largest diplomatic forum, accentuated the growing schism between the two superpowers during Trump’s first term, which has raised alarms about a new cold war.
“Each of these leaders views flexibility as a weakness, and the ability to compromise is the essence of diplomacy,” said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center for US-China Relations. “So they still disagree. It’s a very alarming downward spiral. “
The fact that such a confrontation is on public display at the United Nations, Schell said, “makes the UN more or less irrelevant, and that’s alarming too: we’ve stepped out of the compromise framework, where we had some ways to mediate our differences. “.
A few weeks before the presidential election, Trump also used his speech to highlight what he sees as his foreign policy achievements: isolating Iran, moving forward to withdraw forces from Afghanistan and orchestrating normalized ties between Israel and two Arab Gulf countries. But his attempt to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic, and far from what critics call his own inept response, was a dominant theme in the speech.
“We have fought a fierce battle against the invisible enemy – the China virus,” Trump said. He spoke of American advances in life-saving treatments, predicted successful vaccine completion and distribution, and stated: “We will end the pandemic and enter a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation and peace.”
Trump did not mention that the United States has many more confirmed cases than any other country, nearly seven million and many more deaths, more than 200,000.
He reiterated his claim that the Chinese deliberately concealed what they knew about the virus after it was first detected in the central city of Wuhan last year, allowing it to spread. He also reiterated his accusation that the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, is controlled by Beijing and was complicit in its early inaction, which China and the WHO have denied. Trump has removed the United States from the WHO, a measure that will take effect in July of next year.
“The United Nations must hold China accountable for its actions,” he said.
Xi, by contrast, described China as a benevolent power that wishes no one ill, not to mention China’s expansionary behavior in the South China Sea, mass arrests in Xinjiang, political repression in Hong Kong, and warnings to Taiwan, self-determination. ruling island that the ruling Communist Party of China considers Chinese territory.
“Covid-19 reminds us that we live in an interconnected global village with a common interest,” Xi said. “No country can benefit from the difficulties of others or maintain stability by taking advantage of the problems of others.”
In a blow to Trump’s approach to international diplomacy and trade, Xi said: “Burying your head in the sand like an ostrich in the face of economic globalization or trying to fight it with the spear of Don Quixote goes against the trend of history. “.
The division between the United States and China quickly emerged as a dominant theme in this year’s General Assembly session, which itself is a victim of the coronavirus pandemic. For the first time in the 75-year history of the United Nations, no leaders attended this year’s session; instead, they sent their speeches through prerecorded videos.
The delegation from each of the 193 member states was limited to one or two people, widely spaced and wearing masks in the General Assembly hall, which would normally be packed with dignitaries. Most of the side meetings, unofficial person-to-person diplomacy and spontaneity that normally color such events will not take place this year.
The artificial sensation of this year’s gathering has come against a backdrop of cascading crises of regional conflicts, climate change, rising poverty and hunger, all amplified by the coronavirus, exposing what critics have called chronic weaknesses in The United Nations.
Despite the best intentions of Secretary General António Guterres, the organization’s basic inability to orchestrate an effective global response to the pandemic has been fully manifested for months. His call for a ceasefire in the wars that have devastated Yemen, Syria and Libya, made for the first time in March, has largely gone unheeded, and in his own speech on Tuesday he expressed his hope that one would be achieved for end of the year.
“Our world is struggling, stressed, and looking for real leadership and action,” Guterres said. “We are facing a fundamental moment. Those who built the United Nations 75 years ago had experienced a pandemic, a global depression, a genocide and a world war. They knew the cost of discord and the value of unity. “
Now, he said, “we are faced with our own 1945 moment.”
Mr. Guterres also seemed especially aware of the threats to the United Nations posed by the rift between the United States and China, the organization’s two main funders.
“We are moving in a very dangerous direction,” he said. “Our world cannot afford a future in which the two largest economies divide the world into a Great Fracture, each with its own business and financial rules and artificial intelligence and Internet capabilities.”
Such a division, he said, “runs the risk of inevitably becoming a geostrategic and military division. We must avoid this at all costs. “
