China rises as Trump cedes leadership in COVID-19 crisis

WASHINGTON >> In the best of pandemic-ridden worlds, the coronavirus would spur powerful countries to work together as everyone faces the same danger.

Not this time. The United States and China have turned the pandemic into a battle zone in their struggle for global influence.

And so far, the U.S. is losing ground. After bungling its initial response to the infections that first appeared in Wuhan, China appears to have largely contained the contagion and is delivering medical supplies to Italy, Spain and other hard-hit countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping spent last week offering well-publicized help to leaders around the world.

The White House bungled the U.S. response by failing to stockpile test kits and medical supplies, insisting that a travel ban with China would protect Americans. It didn’t. After initially sending aid to Italy, federal officials are now frantically trying to buy masks and other critically needed gear from other countries to cover shortages at home.

Meanwhile, Beijing and Washington squabbled over which country was to blame.

In China, officials initially tried to cover up the Wuhan outbreak and rebuffed U.S. and United Nations offers to send scientists to help study the virus, then spread a conspiracy theory, unsupported by evidence, that visiting U.S. soldiers had introduced it.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called his counterpart in Beijing to complain, and launched an attack on Xi’s government.

“The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated,” Pompeo told reporters, blasting Beijing for providing assistance to other countries and then “claiming that they are now the white hat.”

Pompeo also created a needless diplomatic flap last week by demanding the Group of 7 democracies blame the pandemic on the “Wuhan virus” in a joint communique intended to show global powers standing shoulder to shoulder during a global crisis.

The other G-7 countries refused and the joint statement was shelved. A once-powerful coalition led by the U.S. was visibly disunited.

Trump chairs the G-7 this year, but diplomats said he didn’t convene a videoconference of its leaders until France’s Emmanuel Macron repeatedly nudged him to. That’s not leadership.

Pompeo is ignoring our allies’ needs. European countries in the grips of the deadly pandemic want China’s help. They don’t want to score rhetorical points against Beijing; they need to stay on Xi’s good side.

China’s apparent recovery, coupled with the White House disarray, is allowing Xi to win hearts and minds around the world. Xi is simply doing what any normal big-power leader would do: working to expand his country’s influence.

It’s not that China is acting more like a global leader. It’s that the U.S. is acting less like one.

The State Department offered aid to more than two dozen countries, but it’s been virtually invisible because it shows such disdain for alliances and international organizations.

China’s still recovering from its outbreak. And there’s been a backlash in parts of Europe against clumsy Chinese efforts to mix humanitarian aid with commercial deals, like the electronic giant Huawei’s shipments of surgical masks to countries where it’s seeking big contracts.

“I’d say both the U.S. and China are playing the soft-power game very poorly,” Susan A. Thornton, a former State Department China expert, told me. “When thousands of people are dying, you’d better be seen to be doing everything you can to save lives and cooperate, or you’re not going to win any hearts and minds.”

Which political or economic model is most effective in fighting COVID-19 remains unclear. Nations that have fared best so far are well-run democracies with sophisticated health care networks that did lots of early testing: South Korea, Taiwan, possibly Germany.

Like any other global cataclysm, the pandemic appears likely to change the balance of power — depending partly on which countries recover quickly.

So far, China appears to have increased its influence; how much isn’t clear. It has made the U.S. look ineffective; how durably isn’t clear.

It has also made traditional institutions of international cooperation, like the U.N. and the G-7, look irrelevant as a medical catastrophe and economic carnage threaten global stability.

That makes the most likely outcome a world where nobody’s a winner.