World experts shared insights on US COVID-19 reaction

In late August, experts from Asia, Europe and America attended a webinar co-hosted by the Forum on Politics and International Relations and the College of International Relations/Institute of Overseas Chinese, Huaqiao University to discuss the US handling of the raging COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on China-US relations.

Mario Telo, a professor from Université Libre de Bruxelles

The COVID-19 crisis has shown the dramatic discrepancy between the scale of the current transnational challenges (public health, climate change, security, financial stability, extreme poverty, sustainable development, terrorism…) and the weakness of global governance. This gap was visible even before, but became evident in 2020. The US, Brazil, India and the UK are led by right-wing nationalist leaders who denied the relevance of the COVID-19 challenge. Nationalism and power politics are coming back in their worst forms - against both natural and social science that show the transnational characteristics of public health.

The US is not only cutting its contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO) budget, but is also leaving the organization. Such behavior in the middle of a global pandemic, like the US leading intellectual Joseph Nye said recently at a conference in Venice, has to do with the collapse of morality.

How to promote a change? The critical factor will be the capacity of detailing not only what to do, but firstly how to do - how to improve UN agencies efficiency and legitimacy. Reforms of the modes and levels of governance must be the main objective, affecting the UN institutions and the WHO decision-making process.

Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation

The impact of COVID-19 in the services-dominated US economy has been severe. The IMF's June 2020 World Economic Outlook Growth projections see US GDP growth down to -8 percent this year, while China is the only economy that shows a +1 percent growth.

The difference between the two is because of the way they handled the infection. China instituted large-scale quarantines, social distancing and prompt treatment to those affected. The US handling was marred by poor political leadership and the inevitable consequences of its federal governance system where each state decides its own rules.

The US failed on several counts. It was not able to ramp up testing fast enough, despite being the highest ranked country in the Global Health Security Index. Missteps by the Trump administration, as well as malfunctioning tests, led to delayed responses.

There have also been other systemic problems. 28 million people lack health insurance in the US and would have had to pay for their own treatment and so people with milder symptoms were unwilling to isolate themselves because 25 percent of American workers do not have paid sick leave. Many undocumented immigrants who feared deportation stayed away from hospitals even after they were infected.

Trump accused those who were raising the alarm of trying to undermine his presidency. In turn the Democrats accused him of failing to respond adequately to the threat and politicizing it. There is no universal masking mandate in the country. Further, playing into his election politics, Trump has discouraged social distancing, an important means of fighting the infection.

Zhao Suisheng, a professor at the University of Denver

There are many discussions about the US systematic flaws reflected from the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, once the US system is mobilized, it can achieve many results. Unfortunately, the core of the US failure in handling the pandemic is the failure of the US leadership. From the very beginning, Trump showed no interest in fighting the pandemic but only his re-election, so he made the issue a political one. As long as Trump is the president, the pandemic can hardly be put under control.

Now China and the US have entered an all-out confrontation, including the spheres of politics, economy, culture and technology. In this process, ideology has played a major role. As long as Trump is re-elected, this confrontation cannot be eased. What I fear is that the two countries will each form their own way of doing things, which will lead to non-cooperation in many issues. The pandemic is the very example which turns out to be a zero-sum game.

China should pay attention to domestic politics in the US. Misunderstanding between the two will make one difficult to predict the behavior of the other, thus enable to carry out reasonable policies to solve problems.

Lin Hongyu, Dean of the School of International Relations, Huaqiao University

The Covid-19 crisis is both the result and inducement of the "great changes unseen in a century", which was accelerated and catalyzed by the pandemic.

The U.S. response to the outbreak is both unexpected and predictable. What is unexpected is that as the most developed country in the world, the United States is the most backward in fighting against the Covid-19, becoming the country with the most infected and killed people in the world.

Meanwhile, it is not surprising that since President Trump took office, the shortcomings of the US national governance system have been magnified, which inevitably led to the failure of the US fighting against the pandemic.

Gao Fei, vice President of China Foreign Affairs University

The United States has faced many challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, health care reform, unilateralism, racial discrimination and nationalism.

China and the United States are unable to cooperate in response to the health crisis due to the impacted relations between the two countries before the epidemic. Besides, the outbreak further amplified some of problems, triggering consequences like the closure of consulates of the two countries. It is Trump's coming to power that makes America's diplomatic profession in trouble.

Shen Wei, vice President of Deakin University in Australia

There are four reasons for the failure of the US response.

Firstly, from the very beginning of fighting against the Covid-19, the US shifted the blame onto China, which escalated the tension of China-US relations, turning the original win-win cooperation mode to a lose-lose situation.

Secondly, the United States itself is not well prepared to deal with a major global public health crisis. In 2018, the United States disbanded its health crisis response team. Since then, the CDC's funding has been decreasing, and the distribution of local medical resources is extremely uneven.

Thirdly, from the perspective of the US political system, partisan rivalry is prominent in the process of responding to the COVID-19. Anti-coronavirus actions including wearing masks have been politicized.

Last but not least, President Trump's capricious rhetoric on COVID-19 has led to the lack of awareness of the pandemic among the American people.

Yang Yi, a professor at James Madison University in the United States

At the time of the outbreak, the United States, with 4 percent of the world's population, astonishingly accounts for 25 percent of the world's COVID-19 cases.

This crisis has revealed many existing problems in American society, such as race discrimination, political system, lagging medical care for citizens, and extreme polarization between the rich and the poor.

Since there are more than 70 days left before the US presidential election, Trump will certainly continue to focus on China card and allow hawks to adopt a hard-line policy towards China.

Professors from Université libre de Bruxelles, Australian Deakin University, Aalborg University of Denmark, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Italien Medici International Institute also attended the webinar and shared their unique insights on US COVID-19 reaction.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)