Rebuilding coalition in G7 meeting ‘ won’t help US recover past glory’
▶ Members are not solid allies for Washington to contain Beijing: experts
The world is closely watching whether US President Joe Biden will successfully unite American alliances during his first major multilateral engagement as president with leaders from the Group of Seven nations ( G7) in a virtual meeting on Friday to deal with the challenges from China and Russia.
The G7 meeting draws closely on the heels of the meetings of the 30- member NATO on Wednesday and Thursday, in which the world’s most powerful military allies reportedly discussed an array of challenges including those from China and Russia. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday also met virtually with his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India in the “Quad” framework.
All these meetings have shed light on the Biden administration’s strategic plans – the US would not alter its perception of seeing China as its main competitor or going further to contain China despite the international community has high anticipation for the restoration of ties between China and the US as the leaders of the two countries shared a phone call during the Lunar Chinese New Year.
Despite the Biden administration’s eagerness to tout the idea of seeing China and
despite the COVID- 19, a historic winter storm hit the southern part of the US with bone- chilling temperatures, leaving at least 30 people dead as of Wednesday local time and 3 million people under blackout.
The situation was particularly dire in the oilrich state of Texas, which has been dubbed by some as the energy capital of the world. Some living in the state described a dark, apocalyptic scene, as they struggled for over 48 hours without electricity and water – the most basic functions of a modern civilization.
While Americans are struggling to continue with their lives, all levels of government in the US have so far failed to come up with any answers other than pointing fingers and resorting to partisan fights, sparking widespread outrage.
Among the most outrageous was a comment from the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, Tim Boyd, who wrote in response to criticism that “no one owes you [ and] your family anything, nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this… only the strong will survive and the weak will perish.” Boyd has since resigned.
Deeper trouble
While weather conditions may have played a role, there is a deeper systemic trouble in the US power grid, including outdated equipment and transmission lines and profit- hunger private power firms and a failed governance system to fix those long- running problems, analysts said.
“Why does the US use the winter storm as the excuse every time?” said Shu Bin, director of the State Grid Beijing Economics Research Institute, noting that the power grid system is very vulnerable and requires constant maintenance and upgrade.
A report from the US Department of Energy ( DOE) in 2015 said that 70 percent of power transformers in the country were 25 years or older, 60 percent of circuit breakers were 30 years or older, and 70 percent of transmission lines are 25 years or older.
China has been investing heavily on basic research and development for technology in power generation and distribution to make it smarter and safer. For example, with the help of big data and other innovations, future grid construction will use large- scale “insulation sensors,” which are like smart watches that monitor our health status, to monitor the system status, according to Shu.
Also presenting a big trouble for the US is separate power networks with no national coordination and regulation.
For example, the power system in Texas is not connected to other regional power grids, which made it impossible to redirect power distribution when the state’s own system failed, experts pointed out. “The US has no nationwide power grid network allocation plan like China. When it encounters extreme weather, a state won’t help another state like some Chinese provinces and regions do with flexible allocation plans,” said Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University.
Despite warnings of problems in the national power grid, as indicated in the DOE report, the US government failed to come up with a fix and basically left the matter in the hands of private companies, which are after profits rather than safety, experts said.
A recombinant strain of the novel coronavirus has likely been detected in the US, leading Chinese experts to warn on Thursday that a more dangerous virus could emerge if SARS- CoV- 2 recombines with other coronavirus.
Bette Korber, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, earlier this month said she discovered evidence of the new strain, which was a recombination of the variants detected in the UK and California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles, according to a report published in the London- based New Scientist magazine on Tuesday.
Recombination can be viewed as a greater variation than mutations discovered previously. But as long as it is still limited within the SARSCoV- 2 strains, it would not largely affect the virus’ antigenicity, a Beijing- based vaccine expert told the Global Times on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
However, the expert warned that the situation would be worse if a recombination occurs between SARS- CoV- 2 and other coronavirus – for example, the SARS virus.
Recombination could lead to the emergence of new and even more dangerous variants, although it isn’t clear how much of a threat this first recombination might pose, said the New Scientist magazine report.
If confirmed, the recombination would be the first to be detected in this pandemic while continuous and rapid mutations of SARS- CoV- 2 have brought about enough concerns to the world over the deadly disease, as some vaccines have been reported to be less potent against certain variants.
“It is certainly impossible for humans to prevent the virus from mutating. Facing the changes, we have to develop multivalent vaccines or seasonal vaccines and accept inoculations to get immunity, just like what we do against the flu,” Jiang Chunlai, a professor at Jilin University’s School of Life Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Dimas Covas, director of the Butantan Institute, the Brazilian partner of Chinese vaccine producer Sinovac Biotech, told media on Wednesday that they had received good results on the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine against the variants detected in the UK and South Africa, while BioNTech/ Pfizer and Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccines have reported unsatisfactory performance on some strains.