Why China and the USA Aren’t Cooperating on COVID-19?
The intergovernmental cooperation between the United States and China was an essential part of the battle against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. However, a significant cooperation to battle COVID-19 has not happened yet. The state of US and China bilateral connections and the failure to collaborate have possibly worsened the pandemic.
Despite resemblances between both initial outbreaks, COVID-19 appears to have grown the antagonism and competition between China and the United States.
Many credit the lack of pandemic cooperation with a preoccupation with the ongoing trade and propaganda war. However, indicators of US-China cooperation on various other issues, such as recent mutual commitments to deal with the climate crisis, reveal that deteriorating reciprocal relations may be a fraction of the story concerning the failure to coordinate on COVID-19. A mismatch in perceptions on how to deal with domestic healthcare governance, which was not evident in 2003, might also play an essential part.
US-China cooperation in public health began with the normalization of relations in 1979. The Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, made in 1979, paved the way for the Protocol for Cooperation in the Science and Technology of Medicine and Public Health. That developed the foundation for both nations to keep a relationship on health matters.
Cooperation deepened under the governance of Jeff Koplan, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC), from 1998 to 2002, when the United States assisted China in developing an effective public health framework compared to past ones.
The outbreak of SARS in 2003 highlighted weak points in China’s public health emergency management and encouraged it to improve, and the United States CDC provided vital assistance. The US CDC collaborated with the Chinese National Influenza Center to strengthen its flu surveillance capacity. Chinese public health personnel received virology and epidemiology training with United States CDC support. United States aid became an essential element of China’s public health response and emergency management.
Throughout the SARS break out, China knew it was utterly unprepared to manage a public health emergency effectively. Since then, the government has taken measures to deal the several weaknesses. It provided extra funding to public health and built a multi-tiered disease control and prevention network. The central government also rearranged different agencies within the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention into a collection to improve crises coordination.
After that outbreak, China continued to improve its health cooperation with US counterparts, having positive impressions of the US public health model at the time and an eagerness to embrace United States practices. Amid a visit in 2003, by Tommy Thompson, the United States health secretary, at the time, the USA promised to collaborate with China to develop a stronger public health infrastructure in China.
However, before the COVID-19 outbreak, Chinese perceptions of US domestic governance had progressively changed. While the US maintains the superiority of its governance approaches, China has gradually seen itself on equal footing to the United States.
Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, said in a meeting with the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the United States does not possess the qualifications to claim that it wants to talk to China from a position of strength.
In these changing Chinese understandings, a driving factor is its remarkable breakthroughs in building a reliable domestic health system over the last ten years. Since 2009, China has made considerable progress in improving access to care through several healthcare reforms at a standard complimented by the World Bank.
The mishandling of COVID-19 in the United States confirmed China’s belief that the US public health crisis response model is inadequate. Since late July 2021, US cumulative case numbers have surpassed 34 million, over 10 percent of its population, while China reported around 100,000 cases in a population of 1.4 billion.
This strengthened the Chinese view that the USA lost its health superiority, concluding that institutional strength and Chinese culture were essential to overpowering domestic COVID-19. However, China’s system still lacks in some parts – the USA ranks fourth on the planet Index of Healthcare Innovation, while mainland China is not even approved for assessment.
Nevertheless, it seems that cooperation may be contingent on the United States’ recognition of China’s development in domestic health governance by referring to it as an equal partner. The situation could continue to be more similar to competition until then.
However, China must also turn President Xi Jinping’s words into action and be ‘excited to learn any lessons we can from the success of other cultures, and handy welcome suggestions and constructive criticism.’ China ought to continue to recognize its flaws and limits in domestic health governance and observe other nations, recognizing successes that the United States has had.
Zhong Nanshan, a renowned Chinese disease expert, mentioned that China still has room for improvement and has much to learn from the practices of the United States and other industrialized nations. Future pandemic cooperation between both great powers may depend on reconstructing mutual trust and developing a shared understanding of each other’s best practices.
Originally published on East Asia Forum. Read the original article.
