1472020 ‘China-US geopoltes inthe age of corona | The Interpreter
China-US geopolitics
in the age of corona
RAMESH THAKUR
Beijing seeks to capitalise and claim global leadership in
fighting the virus, while Trump shows no interest at all.
Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images
Published 2 Apr 202009:30 OComments China Coronavirus United States
f¥Gring
hitpsuwoutowyinsite.orgthe-interpreterichina-us-geopoltics-age-corona ve1472020 ‘China-US geopoltes inthe age of corona | The Interpreter
The coronavirus pandemic is a “black swan” moment: a rare and
unpredictable event that could have momentous, system-wide, and
unforeseen consequences. China deserves credit for having mobilised
quickly, efficiently, and effectively after initial missteps to defeat the
Covid-19 disease. Domestically, the early coverups and punishment of
whistle-blowers have been displaced by the narrative of a heroic
patriotic victory led by President Xi Jinping and the Chinese
Communist Party.
Beijing is now retooling to capitalise by claiming global leadership on
turning the tide. While many Western countries dithered, China
successfully contained the epidemic with brutal efficiency as a strong
authoritarian state. Meanwhile democratic India is using equally brutal
tactics to enforce the world’s harshest lockdown, for example by
spraying desperate migrant workers with chemical disinfectant, The
privileged jet-setters who imported the virus can utilise the private
hospitals but the poor they infect have little access to decent
healthcare and will be disproportionately devastated.
One roadblock to Beijing's global lustre is The pandemic
aggressive questioning of why greater China highlighted the
has been the source of many serial flu world’s dependence
outbreaks. Even the 1918 “Spanish Flu” on China for critical
pandemic may have started with Chinese supplies as a risk
labourers. China must implement tough with a concreteness
measures to clean up the wet markets that that no amount of
are breeding grounds for species-hopping
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Chine US geopotis in the age of corona | The nterpreter
viruses. “National sovereignty” is a abstract discussions
meaningless juridical fiction against the could capture.
empirical reality of diseases that cross
borders at lightning speed.
The four-decade rise of China has greatly enhanced its weight in
regional and global institutions, and also cemented its place as the
hub of global supply chains across a broad array of manufacturing
sectors. The pandemic highlighted the world’s dependence on China
for critical supplies as a risk with a concreteness that no amount of
abstract discussions could capture. Policies will henceforth pivot, on
strategic grounds, to self-reliance and diversification of suppliers.
However, this must be supplemented with building international
functional redundancy in food supplies, health and value chains in a
deliberate strategy of “risk reduction through diversification”.
The 2008-09 financial crisis marked the end of the “unipolar” moment
of unchallengeable US primacy. China skilfully exploited the collapse
of US and European reputation for economic competence and moral
and financial rectitude to expand its worldwide soft power. The
coronavirus panic could potentially mark the moment of Chinese
ascendancy in the “psychological balance of power’,
hitpsuwoutowyinsite.orgthe-interpreterichina-us-geopoltics-age-corona ae1472020 ‘China-US geopoltes inthe age of corona | The Interpreter
China's Xi Jinping at the 2018 BRICS summit (GovernmentZA/Flickr)
Will voters reward President Donald Trump for his intuition that US
trade policies had facilitated the rise of China as a potentially hostile
great power and given it the tools to disrupt the supplies of essential
goods in a global emergency?
Trump seems uninterested in exercising US diplomatic and economic
leadership. The European Union has failed the test in its responses to.
Italy, an original member, and Serbia, a candidate country. Serbia was
encouraged to switch imports from China to Europe but was refused
medical goods to cope with Covid-19 because the equipment is
needed for EU health-care systems; Italy issued urgent requests for
ventilators and masks, but none were forthcoming from EU partners.
China stepped into the breach in both cases, complete with photo-
ops.
China's diplomatic march through developing countries, where the
biggest killer is poverty, will be even more decisive. The world’s
hitpsuwoutowyinsite.orgthe-interpreterichina-us-geopoltics-age-corona 48suz020 Chine US geopotisin the age of corona | Te erpreter
bottom billion subsist in a Hobbesian state of nature where life is
“nasty, brutish and short’: The human and economic costs of
coronavirus will be far more devastating with low state capacity, weak
health systems, teeming slums, unclean water and sanitation systems,
congested mass transit, and inadequate safety nets. The killer
ailments are water-borne infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies
and neonatal and maternal complications. The biggest death toll even
from the 1918 pandemic - between one-sixth to one-third of the total ~
was in India.
US President Donald Trump salutes USNS Comfort en route to New York
City for Covid-19 relief efforts (White House/Flickr)
Coronavirus threatens to overwhelm the health and economies of
many developing countries dependent on tourism and commodity
exports and vulnerable to capital flight. In addition to lending a
helping hand to Italy and Serbia, China, Jack Ma and the Alibaba
Foundation have also shipped supplies to countries in Asia, the Middle
East and Africa. Exploiting the open lack of Euro-Atlantic solidarity,
China has waged a surprisingly successful coronavirus propaganda
war as the world’s white knight. The US and European governments
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Chine US geopotisin the age of corona | Te erpreter
have focussed inwardly on domestic concerns; China has kept its eye
on the prize of discrediting and displacing the US as the go-to major
power in global crises. Most recipient countries of China's largesse to
help cope with the pandemic will soften criticisms of its domestic and
regional misdemeanours.
With US disengagement from the UN, China has put its nationals at
the head of four of the UN's 15 specialised agencies, compared to
other Security Council permanent members with just one each. Ina
compelling demonstration of the consequences of the crumbling
architecture of world order, Trump’s disruption of the global trading
order made it correspondingly more difficult to organise a
coordinated response to the pandemic or to provide the requisite
world leadership. Amidst the potential wreckage of the major Western
economies under protracted lockdowns, China’s capital markets
remain strong and far from fearing a decoupled world, China may set
the terms on which it's implemented.
In fresh proof that history does irony, the coronavirus epidemic that
was “Made in China” and multiplied out of control because of initial
obfuscation and denialism, may end up expanding China's global
reach and influence.
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