THENEWYORKER,M AY18, 2020 11
COMMENT
BLAMINGBEIJING
W
hen an Ebola epidemic erupted
in West Africa, in 2014, the
United States and China, the world’s
two largest economic powers, responded
in starkly different fashions. The Oba
ma Administration dispatched the 101st
Airborne and other troops to build treat
ment hospitals, and donated more than
half of the $3.9 billion in relief funds col
lected from governments worldwide.
Within six months, the outbreak was
under control, and the U.S.led effort
was hailed as a template for handling
future epidemics.
Chinese mining and construction
firms had big businesses in Liberia,
Guinea, and Sierra Leone, but Beijing
struggled to mount a humanitarian re
sponse. Between August and October of
that year, nearly ten thousand Chinese
nationals fled those countries in a panic.
China, unaccustomed to such missions,
sent medical teams and supplies, but,
over all, it contributed less than four per
cent of the relief funds.
Six years later, however, neither na
tion can claim to have led the way in
managing the COVID19 pandemic, which
has so far killed more than a quarter of
a million people around the world. The
efforts of both have been marred by de
nial, coverup, and self deception. Presi
dent Donald Trump’s trade war and Pres
ident Xi Jinping’s hostility to Western
influence had already frayed the coun
tries’ relationship to its most fragile point
in decades. Now, in a bid to deflect crit
icism, they are turning against each other
in perilous ways.
For President Xi, containing the dis
ease, which first emerged in Hubei Prov
ince four months ago, has been a race
against both a publichealth and a polit
ical calamity. After initially silencing doc
tors who reported the virus, Beijing gained
control of the outbreak by locking down
Hubei, testing millions of people, and
quarantining suspected cases, even if it
required forcibly removing residents from
their homes. By midMarch, China was
reporting nearly no new cases, a claim
that outside experts considered doubtful
but in the neighborhood of truth.
Shaping the narrative of China’s role
in the pandemic will be more difficult.
In April, the Associated Press obtained
government documents showing that
leaders in Beijing knew the potential
scale of the threat by January 14th, but
Xi waited six days before warning the
public—a catastrophic interlude of din
ners, train rides, and handshakes that
helped unleash the pandemic. The gov
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
ernment staged a publicrelations offen
sive, touting China’s exports of medical
gear to other nations—a tactic dubbed
“mask diplomacy.” It also suggested, with
no evidence, that the source of the virus
was a delegation from the United States
that had participated in the Military
World Games in Wuhan in October.
The offensive backfired: buyers com
plained of faulty or undelivered ship
ments, and U.S. officials accused China
of using social media to promote divi
sive and false information.
The Trump Administration, for its
part, has cut off funds to the World
Health Organization and declined to
join the Europeanled fund for vaccine
research. Trump’s delusions—that the
virus would vanish in a “miracle,” that
an antimalarial drug would shortcut sci
ence, that ingesting disinfectant could
help—have further reduced the Admin
istration’s reputation to a baleful farce.
Last week, Kevin Rudd, the former Prime
Minister of Australia, wrote in Foreign
Affairs that the Administration had “left
an indelible impression around the world
of a country incapable of handling its
own crises, let alone anybody else’s.” In
Rudd’s view, the “uncomfortable truth
is that China and the United States are
both likely to emerge from this crisis
significantly diminished.”
The Administration could credibly
have criticized China’s early mishan
dling of the virus, and its efforts to con
trol international scrutiny of the virus’s
origins. Instead, the White House seized
on a blameBeijing strategy to under
mine China’s growing global power and
shore up Trump’s bid for reëlection. (An
ad from a proTrump super pac says,
