Washington’s bare-faced stigmatizing of China both repulsive and harmful

If nothing else, the rising death toll from the novel coronavirus and the warnings of experts that the situation is still grim would seem to be reason enough for the world’s two largest economies to set aside their differences and address the needs of the moment.

Heaven knows, it is incumbent on all people to have the common decency to concentrate on countering this threat, for despite some of the worst-hit countries seeing an improvement in their situations, not only do they face the risk of their falling COVID-19 fatality rates rebounding, but it is anticipated that some of the most vulnerable countries are yet to face the full shock of the virus.

With lives being lost and still at risk, in the United States as well as elsewhere, it is hard for those who do not share the US administration’s convictions to fathom why it has chosen to not only snub Beijing’s calls for cooperation — which to the rest of the world is a no-brainer, if the virus is to be successfully contained — but also taken the pandemic as an opportunity to intensify its efforts to get the world to decouple from and isolate China.

This is especially bemusing, since the US has proved not to be immune to the viral tsunami.

Indeed, one of the things that the outbreak has clearly shown is that in the face of this threat, the only thing exceptional about the US has been the selfish cold-heartedness of the US administration itself, which is playing Russian roulette with American people’s lives while it pursues its ideologically driven vendetta against China.

Its callous exploitation of the pandemic for political purposes has once again been displayed by its attempt to take advantage of the annual World Health Assembly, held on Monday and Tuesday, to reiterate its call for a guilt-presumed investigation into the origin of the virus targeting China — simply because by doing so it can highlight the curb on travel from China that was the only early action it took in response to the pandemic — and to press the World Health Organization, which is the host of the meeting, to invite Taiwan to take part in the event. The island is ineligible to attend as a separate entity since it is part of the People’s Republic of China, which participates as the sovereign state.

Although the US president said on Friday that he is considering resuming US funding of the WHO, which he had recently suspended, the amount promised will only be 10 percent of the original level, showing that it intends to use its funding as carrot and stick to get the WHO to toe its line.

And while many countries advocate that a vaccine against the disease should be a “people’s vaccine”, and a public health good, there are signs the US thinks otherwise, as it is investing huge amounts of money to purchase the required knowhow from around the world so that it can monopolize the development of a vaccine. By doing so, it would be able to use it as a means of persuasion.

With its mind set on its anti-China course, the US administration has shown that as far as it is concerned it is the devil take the hindmost so long as it can stay true to that heading. Yet in adhering to its orientation, it is harming global well-being to the detriment and discredit of the US.