For the sake of people’s lives, global solidarity is essential

As President Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the opening ceremony of the 73rd World Health Assembly on Monday, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided the world with a chance to see how crucial international solidarity and cooperation are in responding to a global health threat.

His earnest call for the World Health Organization to play the leading role in advancing such cooperation and for a global reserve and transportation hub of public health emergency supplies to be created in cooperation with the United Nations, along with his pledge that China will provide $2 billion to support the global fight against the virus over the next two years and assist the most vulnerable African countries, as well as make any vaccines it may develop against the virus a global public good have driven home the country’s determination to stand with other countries in the face of this global emergency.

His remarks are in stark contrast to those of his United States counterpart, who penned a scathing letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the same day, in which he gave the international body a 30-day ultimatum to stop being “China’s puppet” or he would permanently freeze US funding of the WHO.

The polarization of the two leaders’ stances on the pandemic explains the divergent performances of the two countries in combating the virus.

Despite its tremendous sacrifices, particularly in Wuhan, the hard-hit capital of Hubei province, China brought the situation under control in about two months, and is now trying to revive its economy so as to sustain its part of the global supply chain, during which it has never ceased providing all the assistance it can to other countries. China’s factories are now running at full steam around the clock producing essential supplies for the global fight against the virus, and its doctors and experts are helping on the front line in dozens of countries.

In contrast, the US with 5 percent of the world’s population accounts for almost one-third of the total infections worldwide and over one-fourth of the deaths. The US administration’s failure to realize the much-better-than-other-countries dealing with the pandemic that the US leader boasted of has seen him go back on his words by creating the very “disturbance” that he opposed when speaking with Xi in a telephone call in late March. With an eye on this year’s presidential election, he has been lambasting China as an enemy of the American people, a tried-and-tested pleaser of a certain demographic in the US.

It is reprehensible that the US administration feels no shame for the heavy loss of life in the country and is justifying its hell-is-others electioneering strategy by bad-mouthing China.

It is not only people in the US that are paying with their lives for the blame game the US administration is playing. The divisive effects of it seizing the opportunity to try and make China an international pariah is attributable to the diluting of the effectiveness of the global response to the pandemic as well.

While the deceitful will always find some who are ready to be deceived, the US administration will find that not everyone is as easily duped as it imagines.