The US withdraws funding to the world body for promoting Chinese propaganda on COVID-19. Trump has a point

Donald Trump has ripped to shreds a lot of the US-backed multilateralism that has powered the world through an era of peace and prosperity following the end of the Second World War. It nurtured the idea from the United Nations to the World Bank, and as the world enters the first truly global crisis since the end of the Pacific War in August 1945, the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, the US President has some justification for his attacks on the WHO and its leader Tedros Adhanom, whom he has accused of being a Chinese lapdog. Finally, he has stopped funding the organisation. While many anti-Trump political and social leaders as well as philatrophists backing global public health initiatives, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have criticised this decision, it is evident that power politics played its part in obfuscating the true face of the virus. The WHO, for all its good intentions, was swayed, failed in its duties by not taking China to task sooner and parroted the Chinese line. It bungled notoriously on the human-to-human transmissibility of the Covid-19 virus when it claimed in a tweet that it was not possible, even though Chinese doctors already knew that was the case and Taiwanese public health officials were letting the world know the same. The problem is that Taiwan, which is the Republic of China but claimed by the People’s Republic of China, is not a member of the WHO. Dr Tedros, in particular, has been criticised for being far too close to the Chinese administration. The fact is the WHO has not covered itself with glory in this case. Previously, during the original SARS outbreak at the turn of the century, the WHO had been critical of Chinese decisions. This time round it did not take a critical look at China’s warnings and systems. However, that is not the fault of the WHO completely as it depends on its member states to give it more accurate information. The Chinese administration under President Xi Jinping has a carefully cultivated sense of news and only fed the WHO what it wanted it to know. No representative was really allowed to interact with Chinese medical staff without Communist Party of China officials present. Given China’s growing influence in the UN, the WHO’s reverence or kowtowing to China aren’t surprising. Its control over the WHO is the result of a much longer lobbying, one that seeks to influence global governance on its terms. Already, China is commanding the post-Covid economy, with both US and Europe dependent on its medical supplies line. Chinese infrastructure projects are already dotting southern Europe. So it will continue its diplomatic manoeuvrings.

Here, even the US has admittedly been off the ball. Trump, who has renounced a leadership role in international bodies, allowed the US seat on the WHO board to remain empty for years. Such a representative could have shared US intelligence with the WHO. For all the comical ineptitude of its President at the start of the crisis, the US did have intelligence of the Chinese virus and what was happening in Wuhan well before the rest of the wide world had an idea of the virulence of the disease. Yielding ground means letting China use its economic heft to secure its primacy instead. The world has until now done a fabulous job of messing up its response to the virus, which has wreaked havoc in southern Europe in terms of lives and hollowed out the global economy. We cannot be petulant in our response to the crisis nor lie about what we are doing. Here both China and the US have let the rest of the world down. They have to step up and act responsible, else the world will leave them both behind.

(Writer: Karan bhasin; Courtesy: The Pioneer)

The US withdraws funding to the world body for promoting Chinese propaganda on COVID-19. Trump has a point

Donald Trump has ripped to shreds a lot of the US-backed multilateralism that has powered the world through an era of peace and prosperity following the end of the Second World War. It nurtured the idea from the United Nations to the World Bank, and as the world enters the first truly global crisis since the end of the Pacific War in August 1945, the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, the US President has some justification for his attacks on the WHO and its leader Tedros Adhanom, whom he has accused of being a Chinese lapdog. Finally, he has stopped funding the organisation. While many anti-Trump political and social leaders as well as philatrophists backing global public health initiatives, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have criticised this decision, it is evident that power politics played its part in obfuscating the true face of the virus. The WHO, for all its good intentions, was swayed, failed in its duties by not taking China to task sooner and parroted the Chinese line. It bungled notoriously on the human-to-human transmissibility of the Covid-19 virus when it claimed in a tweet that it was not possible, even though Chinese doctors already knew that was the case and Taiwanese public health officials were letting the world know the same. The problem is that Taiwan, which is the Republic of China but claimed by the People’s Republic of China, is not a member of the WHO. Dr Tedros, in particular, has been criticised for being far too close to the Chinese administration. The fact is the WHO has not covered itself with glory in this case. Previously, during the original SARS outbreak at the turn of the century, the WHO had been critical of Chinese decisions. This time round it did not take a critical look at China’s warnings and systems. However, that is not the fault of the WHO completely as it depends on its member states to give it more accurate information. The Chinese administration under President Xi Jinping has a carefully cultivated sense of news and only fed the WHO what it wanted it to know. No representative was really allowed to interact with Chinese medical staff without Communist Party of China officials present. Given China’s growing influence in the UN, the WHO’s reverence or kowtowing to China aren’t surprising. Its control over the WHO is the result of a much longer lobbying, one that seeks to influence global governance on its terms. Already, China is commanding the post-Covid economy, with both US and Europe dependent on its medical supplies line. Chinese infrastructure projects are already dotting southern Europe. So it will continue its diplomatic manoeuvrings.

Here, even the US has admittedly been off the ball. Trump, who has renounced a leadership role in international bodies, allowed the US seat on the WHO board to remain empty for years. Such a representative could have shared US intelligence with the WHO. For all the comical ineptitude of its President at the start of the crisis, the US did have intelligence of the Chinese virus and what was happening in Wuhan well before the rest of the wide world had an idea of the virulence of the disease. Yielding ground means letting China use its economic heft to secure its primacy instead. The world has until now done a fabulous job of messing up its response to the virus, which has wreaked havoc in southern Europe in terms of lives and hollowed out the global economy. We cannot be petulant in our response to the crisis nor lie about what we are doing. Here both China and the US have let the rest of the world down. They have to step up and act responsible, else the world will leave them both behind.

(Writer: Karan bhasin; Courtesy: The Pioneer)