The path opened for China to make its case to be the grown-up in the room... the go-to global power that everyone warily respected. In the early days of the pandemic, China won plaudits – from Trump and others – for what at the time seemed like a quick response to containing the coronavirus. But in the COVID-19 world, January is a very long time ago... That narrative has long since been bigfooted by whether China covered up the spread of the coronavirus... and what it should have done to prevent untold human suffering and a global depression. But even before some guy in Wuhan got on the wrong side of a bat, China was already struggling under a snowdrift of problems, including numerous U.S.-China disagreements, tensions in the South China Sea, political challenges in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the possibility of a technological Iron Curtain. Exacerbated by the economic fallout of the pandemic, these have the scope to eat away at the support of China’s middle class for the Communist Party – and erode the stability that Chinese President Xi Jinping so desperately relies on. And well after we’ve returned to eating in (social-distanced) restaurants, China’s still going to be on its back foot. It took decades for China to wash the blood off its hands from the deadly 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The damage to China’s credibility and prestige – domestically as well as internationally – for its role in the spread of COVID-19, and in
1. The United States is “losing less” than anyone else. I know... No country is a “winner” in a murderous pandemic that kills 360,000 people (and counting) and knocks 3% – the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) glass- half-full estimate in April – off of the global economy. But in a world where no single country is driving the agenda, and the seat at the head of the global geopolitical and economic table is vacant, the U.S. may nevertheless come out the other side of the coronavirus pandemic in a better position than any other big country. But even before some guy in Wuhan got on the wrong side of a bat, China was already struggling under a snowdrift of problems... That’s partly because everywhere else is having a crisis that’s at least as bad as – or even worse than – the American experience. In other words, sometimes you “win” just by not losing... Take China... Following the election of President Trump, the U.S. abandoned allies, defied traditional trade partners, ripped up long-standing international agreements, and knocked down the institutional pillars that have kept the world comparatively peaceful and prosperous since the end of World War II.
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June 2020
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