Ever since China began to report to the World Health Organization and other countries including the US about the Covid-19 in early January, the deadly pandemic has turned the world upside down: people are dying, cities are locked down, borders are closed, and the global economy and trade has been impacted.
In the battle against Covid-19, China and the US have taken different approaches, which has not only led to huge differences in how the pandemic has evolved within their borders but reflects the fundamental structural differences in their governments and geopolitical relationships.
What has the global health crisis revealed about the world’s two largest economies? Who will win in the battle against the deadly pandemic? Is there a way to cooperate?
In a recent webinar held by China Institute, a New York-based non-profit that promotes cross-cultural understanding between the US and China, Kishore Mahbubani, author and former diplomat, and Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University and expert on US-China relations, exchanged views on China-US issues that the Covid-19 outbreak had revealed.
Both experts began by agreeing that the health crisis was shedding light on existing problems in the China-US relationship and aggravated geopolitical tensions.
Kishore said the outbreak exposed a deep misunderstanding and a lack of trust between the two governments.
The US saw its geopolitical contest with China as one between “black and white, good and evil, communism and democracy,” but lacked of “a comprehensive long term strategy on how to deal with it.”
China, however, saw it differently. “Its fundamental interest lies in overcoming a century of humiliation that lasted from the Opium Wars to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949,” he said. “Those wounds are still alive and some wounds are opening in this Covid-19 outbreak.”
When the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” it had stirred such controversy that China expelled three of its journalists. “When you have a crisis like Covid-19, what it could do is either heal it and bring people together, or you can reopen painful wounds again.”
Kishore noted that although it was too early to tell how the Covid-19 crisis will eventually play out in both countries, China has done a better job overall in fighting the epidemic.
He pointed out that despite the Chinese government mishandling the first phase of the outbreak, it quickly took effective measures to control the spread of the virus, such as closing down Hubei, a province with a population of nearly 60 million of people, just two days before the Chinese New Year. “That is shocking.”
Kishore credited China’s current success in combating the virus to having a highly efficient meritocratic government. Over the last 40 years since China’s reform and opening-up, government agencies have recruited top talent through its meritocratic selection process. “So at the end of the day, you get the quality of mind in its institutions, which is absolutely remarkable,” Kishore said.
In the case of the US, Kishore said a crisis like this exposes the structural weaknesses in American society, which is “the thought of delegitimization of public agencies.” He quoted former President Ronald Regan’s statement “government is not the solution, government is the problem.” Over the years, the best talent has gone to banks and the financial sector instead of government agencies. “Which is okay,” he said. “But when you have a crisis like this, you need better government agencies to deal with it.”
Graham agreed that the US has been disinvesting in “incompetent government” while China has been absorbing competent and capable officials.
He also stressed that while China had been more successful than the US in reducing Covid-19 infections and deaths, it was too early to comment further due to the uncertainty of the virus.
Covid-19 might shed light on the weaknesses of the US government, he said, but “nobody ever made money in the long run selling the US short,” quoting American business magnate and investor Warren Buffett.
Asked if there was room for cooperation, Graham said despite their tensions, the US and China have a shared interest in fighting the pandemic because the virus poses a threat to the whole world and neither side could defeat it on its own.
“Can we find a way? I think it is possible,” he said. “This could be a learning moment for building a new form of great power relations.”
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