Enlightened leadership can ease global panic

China-US collaboration key to virus battle

International cooperation, a key component for building a community with a shared future for mankind, is critical in arresting the global march of the novel coronavirus pandemic, said Robert Kuhn, a noted China expert from the United States.

Kuhn made the comments after the Extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit on COVID-19 at which leaders including President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump agreed to jointly tackle the disease.

“Never has such cooperation been needed more urgently — to battle and contain the pandemic and to sustain and bolster the world economy,” Kuhn said at the latest Vision China event.

“Containing the global pandemic, like bolstering the global economy, depends on US-China collaboration. If climate change is the world’s most intractable chronic problem, then COVID-19 is the world’s most severe acute problem,” he said.

Kuhn believes nations will collectively win when fighting together against the virus, and will collectively lose when they argue and blame each other.

“I take it seriously when the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, China’s highest authority, called the epidemic ‘a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance’,” he said, adding that he had never recalled the same phrase in his 30-plus years of interactions with China.

Kuhn said there are three reasons why China overcame the pandemic so quickly — commitment, competence and readiness to change and improve.

“China’s commitment to fight the coronavirus was exemplified by the country’s astonishing mobilization to stop its spread,” he said. “The government issued strict and resolute directives — and the whole country marched to this music. This is China’s monumental ‘whole of society’ commitment.”

At the same time, China’s mobilization effort is “unprecedented in global health history” and cannot be replicated to the same extent, he said.

The commitment that went into outbreak containment involved sweeping efforts ranging from putting the country on hold to house-to-house temperature checks, he said.

China’s readiness to change and improve is a critical part of its governance system, especially in response to its shortcomings, Kuhn said. China’s “battle-tested” medical teams and know-how in fighting the novel coronavirus can help other countries benefit from the experience.

Apropos of the pandemic, Xi has repeatedly called for the building of “a community with a shared future for mankind”. While fighting disease or controlling pandemics have always been a “shared future” benefit, they were always tucked within lists of other benefits, such as climate control or preventing terrorism, Kuhn said.

The pandemic’s disruption of the global economy and day-to-day lives has fueled nationalistic fervor, amplified by unsubstantiated rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories, he said.

“It takes no cleverness to inflame feelings with glib rhetoric or political insults,” Kuhn said. “Rational people must work together, not allow fringe invective to erode the capacity to fight a common enemy.

“Containment of the polemic will be more challenging than containment of the coronavirus. If so, Chinese views of America, and American views of China, are only going to deteriorate further, to the detriment of all.”

Enlightened leadership should temper, not inflame, indigenous nationalism, Kuhn added.

“We cannot allow mutual exhaustion to be our last hope,” he said. This is why the recent Xi-Trump phone call was so important.

“China’s vision of a shared future, exhorting all nations to act for the common good, fits our turbulent times.”