25
The U.S. and
Chinese governments
now appear more
interested in taunting
each other than
cooperating to
contain the damage
wreaked by COVID-19. That’s bad news
for the whole world, because if they
worked together to limit further human
and economic damage from this crisis
and to prevent future viral emergencies
from going global, there is much they
could do.
U.S.-China relations have now reached
their lowest point since the immediate
aftermath of the Tiananmen
Square massacre in June 1989.
Both countries have suffered
large-scale loss of life and a
sharp economic slowdown,
but political officials in both
countries are working to
protect their own domestic
standing by blaming the
other’s government. President
Trump has taken to calling
COVID-19 the “Chinese
virus,” while senior Chinese
officials and state media have
pushed a ludicrous theory that the U.S.
created the virus and planted it in China
last fall.
This animosity didn’t begin, of course,
with coronavirus. Trump has waged a
tariff war against China for most of his
presidency and threatened the survival
of Huawei, the telecom giant central to
China’s strategy for state-of-the-art 5G
technologies.But COVID-19, and China’s initial
reaction to it, has made matters much
worse. In early January, at a time when
China was still hiding the spread of the
virus (and, even worse, while Chinese
citizens were traveling unfettered all
around the world), international health
officials hoping to enter the country
to study the virus and its effects were
denied access. In February, Trump
Administration officials announced thatfve Chinese media organizations would
be treated essentially as agents of the
Chinese government. China immediately
retaliated by expelling three Wall Street
Journal reporters because an article that
appeared in that paper referred to China
as “the real sick man of Asia.”
As for the virus itself, Chinese leaders
like to point out that they have achieved
remarkable success in containing
it at home and have now offered
humanitarian help to hard-hit countries
like Italy at a time when America is
headed for chaos. That’s true.
It’s also true that this virus, like severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in
2002, began in China, that
many Chinese people died
needlessly while Chinese
Communist Party officials hid
the dangers and lied, and that
much of the impact elsewhere
in the world can be blamed on
China’s slow initial response.
All true, and in a moment
of true global crisis, none
of these charges will save a
single human life or limit
the economic fallout. At a
bare minimum, the U.S. and
China should share with each other and
with global health institutions useful
data on COVID-19 to help us understand
how to contain this plague. Washington
and Beijing could also invest cash and
scientifc expertise in a joint bid to
develop treatments and a vaccine.
They could work together to create an
early monitoring and surveillance system
to contain future viral threats before
they go global, and propose international
standards for preparedness and best
practices when the next public-health
crisis appears, no matter its source. They
could take the lead in creating global
reserves of medicine and supplies for
future emergencies. They could work
together to bolster the global economy.
In short, instead of accusing each
other of playing with matches, these two
powerhouse countries could help put out
the fre. □THE RISK REPORT
China and America’s blame game
over COVID-19 hurts everyone
By Ian BremmerWashington
and Beijing
could invest
cash and
scientific
expertise
in a joint bid
to develop
treatments
and a vaccineNAT ION
Cash now
A key component of Andrew
Yang’s 2020 presidential
platform was considered
a particularly fringe idea:
universal basic income
(UBI). His proposal, which
he dubbed the Freedom
Dividend, would have put
$1,000 in the pockets of all
U.S. citizens over the age of
18 every single month.
“I’m incredibly excited
by the fact that our
government seems like
they’re on the cusp of doing
the common sense thing to
help people get through this
coronavirus crisis by putting
cash straight into a family’s
hands,” Yang tells TIME of
the UBI-adjacent solutions
that lawmakers in both
parties have embraced.
He argues that other
economic solutions like
paid sick and family leave
would take too long to roll
out. “We don’t have time
right now,” Yang says. “This
is something we actually
can implement immediately,
in a powerful way, that
will improve millions of
Americans’ lives and make
us stronger and healthier
from day one.”
But Yang isn’t taking
sole credit for making the
idea mainstream. “My
goal has always been to
eradicate and alleviate all
of the unnecessary poverty
and deprivation in this
country,” he says.
—Abby VesoulisAmid COVID-
19 fallout,
Yang’s UBI
proposal gets a
second lookVLEDE.indd 25 3/25/20 4:28 PM