G-zero: China and the US Fail the World over Covid-19

Amid a leadership vacuum, global institutions have malfunctioned and people have suffered.

As a result of US incompetence and indifference under Donald Trump and China’s rigid insecurity and mistakes, the world has no global champion to lead the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump’s ineptitude helped put the US at the epicenter of the crisis, but China’s leaders, consumed with propaganda and short-term gain, have not been able to lead either.

In this ‘G-zero’ world marked by a leadership vacuum, writes Zhao Suisheng, global institutions have malfunctioned and people have suffered.

FROM CHINA to ITALY to America and beyond, the covid-19 pandemic has cost more than lives and livelihoods. It has rendered a heavy blow to the already shaky American global leadership established after the second World on the basis of democratic values backed up by economic and military power that could be counted on in a global crisis.

But the us was ill-prepared to fight covid-19 and instead ended up as the global epicenter of the pandemic. As it unfolded, instead of co-ordinating with its allies and international organizations to fight the common enemy, the trump administration focused on blaming the World Health Organization (WHO) and china, and was not even trying to co-operate with allies. cancelling American flights to European countries, the trump administration didn’t even bother to give a heads up before making the announcement. Overwhelmed by the virus at home and failing to protect its own citizens, the us set a bad example for the world and offered no leadership abroad. Numerous observers bemoaned Washington’s performance. “this is perhaps the first global crisis in more than a century where no one is even looking for Washington to lead,” said one. the trump administration’s response to the coronavirus marked “the death of American competence.” the world has come to the “post-american order.”

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In contrast, china’s aggressive, authoritarian and multifaceted response was effective in quickly containing the outbreak. coming out of the crisis stronger than many countries, the chinese government took initiatives to assist other

hard-hit countries by shipping medical equipment and sharing its experiences. some commentators quickly speculated that the pandemic provided an opportunity for china to replace us global leadership. As two prominent American policy analysts suggest, the pandemic has reshaped the world order because the trump administration failed the test of us leadership. Beijing has moved quickly to take advantage of the opening created by us mistakes, positioning itself as the global leader in pandemic response.2

But is china ready to step into the breach and become a global leader? this article argues that while us failure has indeed created a global leadership vacuum, china’s rhetoric has not matched its actions in comprehensively providing the global public goods, such as co-ordinating multilateral responses to the pandemic, global economic and financial recovery and enhanced WHO independence. sino-us infighting has paralyzed multilateral responses to the pandemic and left a void of global leadership.

China’s PERFORMANCE to Contain the Coronavirus

the outbreak was initially seen as china’s “chernobyl moment” and even “the beginning of the end” for the chinese communist Party. the dire geopolitical consequences at a time of growing us-china tensions would play to Washington’s considerable advantage, some thought. dragging its feet initially, the chinese government quickly came to understand the scale of the threat and made a difficult decision to quarantine Wuhan’s 11 million people on January 23 and then extend the quarantine to the entire country of 1.4 billion people as it mobilized vast resources to fight the coronavirus on a scale never seen before.

china’s authoritarian state has many effective instruments at its disposal to ensure that chinese people co-operate and obey the stringent quarantine measures, which included welding doors shut to confine residents to their apartments. In addition to the immensely powerful state bureaucracy and police, the government conducted “community policing” by residents monitoring each other’s activities and reporting violations. to boost detection rates, temperature checkpoints were installed outside all buildings and shops and inside public places. the government efforts were backed by an arsenal of propaganda in the media and large street banners calling on people to be hygienic and follow orders. the state also introduced Big data and monitoring technology for effective surveillance. In a high-tech country where privacy is limited, people were assigned QR codes on their phones that tracked contacts with infected people or visits to high-risk zones. the code was an entrance requirement for many places to track and stop the spread of the virus.

these stringent measures delivered positive results. china announced zero new domestic cases on March 18 and reported zero coronavirus deaths on April 7. the 76-day lockdown on Wuhan was lifted on April 8. china reopened for business in early April, an implicit pushback against some of the criticism about aggressive authoritarian measures.

china’s herculean effort provided an opportunity for the country’s leadership to buttress its claim about the superiority of the china model. launching an international campaign to turn a pandemic that started in china into a diplomatic offensive, the communist propaganda machine was proactive in highlighting the strong capacity of the authoritarian state in contrast to the failure of democratic countries to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Beijing celebrated china’s superior model not only because it quickly contained the virus but also because many other countries, including democracies, had to follow china’s lead to close