作者：Wang Wen  来源：globaltimes.com

来源时间：2020/3/31   发布时间：2020/3/31

旧文章ID：21134

作者：Robert Lawrence Kuhn  来源：globaltimes.com

Editor’s Note:

The coronavirus is posing an increasingly tough challenge to the entire world. What can China’s successful experience offer? What role does it play in the global anti-virus fight? What’s behind some Western politicians’ slandering of China’s efforts? Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of The Kuhn Foundation and recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal (2018), shared his insights on these issues and more with Global Times (GT) reporter Yan Yunming.

GT: The coronavirus outbreak within China has almost been brought under control. How do you evaluate China’s efforts in curbing the epidemic?

Kuhn: To me, one of the probative insights of why and how China has contained, and will continue to contain, the epidemic is the remarkable parallelism between China’s war on the novel coronavirus and China’s war on poverty. Consider the parallel factors:

First, the operational leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), not just giving directives and pronouncements but actually implementing programs and projects through the CPC organizational structure – central and five levels of local government (provincial, municipal, county, township, village).

Second, the leadership of President Xi Jinping, who sets an example for other government officials. President Xi makes the remarkable statement – "I have spent more energy on poverty alleviation than on anything else." I know no other national leader who has made such an assertion.

Third, the mobilization leadership of the CPC, able to command the country’s resources in personnel and materials. For example, assigning "sister" relationships between 16 strong provinces and specific cities in Hubei. An important factor is that since the CPC controls the PLA, through the Central Military Commission, the military can be mobilized instantly to help in domestic crises, like earthquakes, floods and now epidemics. 

I take it seriously when the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee calls the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic "a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance" - a phrase of such significance that in my 30-plus years of watching China, I do not recall the like. 

Let me explain why I was, from the beginning, confident that China would overcome the epidemic. I had three reasons: China’s commitment, competence, and readiness to change and improve.

China’s commitment to fight COVID-19 is exemplified by the country’s astonishing mobilization to stop its spread. The government issued strict and resolute directives with instant and draconian punishment for non-compliance.

The whole country marched to this music. This was China’s monumental "whole of society" commitment. China’s mobilization was unprecedented in global health history. Nowhere could it work like it works in China. And the reason it works relates to how the party system works.

As noted above, it is the same kind of commitment and mobilization that the party has been using to win the battle against poverty since around 2012, with its targeted or precision poverty alleviation campaign, coordinating party leadership and organizations at central government and the five levels of local government. The structural similarities between China’s war on the coronavirus and its war on poverty are indeed striking.

China’s competence to fight the virus is exemplified by the country’s unremitting implementation of its commitment: locking down Wuhan; house-to-house temperature checks; the party’s grid management system of social control; postponing the return to work after the Lunar New Year break of hundreds of millions of travelers.

When I discuss the five or so primary reasons for China’s remarkable development over the past four decades, I always include the party’s willingness to admit and correct errors. Hence, in tracking this virus epic, I focus on the leadership’s forthright acknowledgement of "shortcomings and deficiencies" in the country’s response.

As with any contagion early action is always essential in stopping the spread of virulent diseases. But how to develop an early warning system? The challenge is handling an avalanche of information, from diverse public and private sources and of variegated and uncertain quality.

On the one hand, who can deny that false rumors can increase anxiety, trigger panic, and even destabilize society? On the other hand, it has become evident that suppressing information in the name of social stability can foment disaster. Early local efforts to play down the risks of the coronavirus delayed the response as the contagion mushroomed.

A strong, top-down system is effective at stopping rumors, especially with advanced IT technologies, but it is challenged to enable diverse voices to surface and expose vital truths about frontline problems early in the process. Chinese top leadership has pledged to rid the party of "formalism and bureaucratism."

Transparency is the key. The government states that it will learn lessons from the outbreak, which will enhance its capacity for governance. Self-correction, the party says, is its hallmark.

If so, future historians may well look upon China’s fight against the coronavirus as a turning point in worldwide efforts to contain outbreaks of novel diseases and stop their spread, which globalization and ubiquitous air travel have made vital. History may well thank China for pioneering how to deal with virulent contagions in a globalized world.

GT: Some politicians have politicized the epidemic and used it to attack China’s political system and the CPC. What’s your comment?

Kuhn: Those who use the pandemic to score political points have their priorities mixed up. They nourish the virus with US-China competition, when they should starve the virus through US-China cooperation.

Never has such cooperation been more urgently needed – to battle and contain the pandemic and to sustain and bolster the world economy. Containing the global pandemic, like bolstering the global economy, depends on US-China collaboration. If climate change is the world’s most intractable chronic problem, then COVID-19 is the world’s most severe acute problem.

My two favorite countries have a choice: either work together to fight the pandemic by developing drugs and vaccines to kill and stop COVID-19, or suffer an out-of-control global pandemic and a chain-reaction cratering the global economy. Nations can fight the virus and collectively win, or fight each other and collectively lose.       

GT: Some observers view the epidemic containment work as an assessment of different political systems. Europe has become the new epicenter of the global pandemic, and the number of infections in the US is also rising rapidly. How do you evaluate the measures taken by these democracies? 

Kuhn: There are no perfect political systems; all political systems have tradeoffs. No doubt, China’s system of party-led, strong government can deal more effectively, more efficiently and more rapidly with the stringent demands of a lockdown, quarantine and containment, and mobilization of national resources and healthcare professionals. Democratic countries, such as those in Europe, are used to policy decisions being hotly debated by opposing political parties, and in the media, and thus are not as suited in dealing with emergency situations. Given the emergency situation in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain, they are now seeking to learn from China’s containment success. Conversely, there are other areas of contemporary societies where China may learn from Europe.

In this time of global shifts, the global community must understand one another, especially with respect to China. Simply put, China’s path is socialism with Chinese characteristics, which stresses the leadership of the CPC, and the CPC’s commitment to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the broad-based fulfillment of the Chinese people. China’s path maintains a strong government in all sectors, promotes economic development with the market playing a "decisive role," enforces social stability and regulates social discourse, and prioritizes the welfare of all citizens, including the poorest.

The unique feature distinguishing the China model from Western models, of course, is that the CPC, the party, maintains perpetual leadership and utilizes a meritocratic system rooted in Chinese civilization. Developmental policies that must have long-term commitments, such as infrastructure, science and technology, and poverty alleviation, can have long-term commitment.

As for the trade-offs, the sustained anti-corruption campaign addresses one such trade-off. Comprehensively improving the rule of law addresses another. Continuing challenges also include how to provide diverse opinions in policymaking.

GT: How do you see China’s role in the global fight against the pandemic?

Kuhn: President Xi’s four proposals at the G20 on Thursday to enable humanity as a whole to win the battle against this major infectious disease, and the virtual proximity of world leaders in this extraordinary G20 meeting, give enriched and real-world meaning to the vision of an international community with a shared future and a common destiny.

"A community with a shared future for all humanity" is a grand vision with multiple applications. For years, it has driven foreign policy, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, helping to rectify global imbalances.

Few ever imagined that a pandemic could become so grave so fast. But as the pandemic has burst into planetary consciousness, it demonstrates viscerally the global criticality of "shared future" thinking.  

The challenge for China is to elevate this vision above what appears to some as competitive positioning or even as a sprint to assert China’s leadership. China’s experience in containing the contagion, which many countries now desperately need, provides just such an opportunity.

By sending "battle-tested" medical teams to countries suffering under the siege of contagion, China brings to bear experts with contemporary, frontline, epidemic experience. China’s evolved know-how in fighting and containing the novel coronavirus, especially the selfless work of dedicated Chinese healthcare and logistics professionals, can enable other countries, where outbreaks occurred after China’s, to benefit from China’s experience.

In addition, as China is the world’s manufacturing center, and having ramped up production of healthcare goods, the country has unexcelled capacity for supplying desperately needed materials and equipment. Now is the time to get needed supplies to where they are needed. Nothing else should matter.

GT: The Daily Beast reported on March 21 that the White House is "launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies" which focuses on accusing China of "creating a global pandemic." At this critical time for world cooperation, what’s your comment on such acts?

Kuhn: Emotions worldwide are frayed, rubbed raw by the pandemic’s daily-life disruptions, with economic devastation threatening to exceed that of the 2008 global financial crisis. In this toxic psychological environment, when non-stop news, especially in social media, amplifies fantastical, scurrilous, unsubstantiated rumors by insensitive officials or block-brained conspiracy theorists, attitudes harden and antagonisms ossify. Indigenous nationalism flares in vicious circles.

Containment of the polemic will be more challenging than containment of the coronavirus, the latter likely to burn out before the former. If so, Chinese views of America, and American views of China, are only going to deteriorate further, to the detriment of all. 

GT: What influence will the pandemic have on the Chinese economy and the global economy? Will it be a short or long-term effect? 

Kuhn: It is natural for the economy to suffer because consumption is so dramatically suppressed, the outbreak having come at the worst time, right before the Chinese New Year Spring Festival. But there is no simple statement about the economic condition because the epidemic’s impact is differential – some industries are hit very hard where it will be difficult to recoup the losses, like hospitality, restaurants, airlines; some industries are hit hard but should expect to have a "bounce" make-up after the epidemic is over, like automotive.

I expect e-commerce to do very well, even to accelerate its market penetration, because people will feel more comfortable, at least for a while, shopping online and not going to public places.

Certainly, the central government is enacting policies in support of companies that must navigate several hard months, providing special financings and abatements, particularly for small and medium-sized companies. These programs are in process, giving a confidence boost.

There is concern about international companies, some of which have prior to the epidemic felt their supply chains threatened by US/international trade tensions, and the virus may reinforce their risk-management sense to diversify their supply chains outside of China. Here is where China can take pro-active steps in accelerating further reform and opening up of domestic markets, which will encourage international companies to remain committed to China and perhaps even to take advantage of new opportunities.

In general, China’s economic recovery, once the epidemic is contained, is the "easy" part. One need only review China’s recent history to appreciate the potency and resiliency of Chinese workers, who are the foundation of China’s historic transformation, and to recognize the depth and sophistication of China’s industrial chain, which has development dramatically in recent years and is the deepest and most comprehensive in the world.

One need not be an economist to forecast that, with the novel coronavirus largely contained — but with the country remaining cautious and alert — there will be "snap back" or a "make up" period of strong growth driven by pent-up demand. 

来源时间：2020/3/31   发布时间：2020/3/31

旧文章ID：21133

作者：Robert Zoellick  来源：state.gov

Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State
Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
New York City
September 21, 2005

As Prepared for Delivery

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Zheng Bijian, Chair of the China Reform Forum, who over some decades has been a counselor to China’s leaders. We have spent many hours in Beijing and Washington discussing China’s course of development and Sino-American relations. It has been my good fortune to get to know such a thoughtful man who has helped influence, through the Central Party School, the outlook of many officials during a time of tremendous change for China.

This month, in anticipation of President Hu’s visit to the United States, Mr. Zheng published the lead article in Foreign Affairs, "China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great Power Status." This evening, I would like to give you a sense of the current dialogue between the United States and China by sharing my perspective.

Some 27 years ago, Chinese leaders took a hard look at their country and didn’t like what they saw. China was just emerging from the Cultural Revolution. It was desperately poor, deliberately isolated from the world economy, and opposed to nearly every international institution. Under Deng Xiaoping, as Mr. Zheng explains, China’s leaders reversed course and decided "to embrace globalization rather than detach themselves from it."

Seven U.S. presidents of both parties recognized this strategic shift and worked to integrate China as a full member of the international system. Since 1978, the United States has also encouraged China’s economic development through market reforms.

Our policy has succeeded remarkably well: the dragon emerged and joined the world. Today, from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization, from agreements on ozone depletion to pacts on nuclear weapons, China is a player at the table.

And China has experienced exceptional economic growth. Whether in commodities, clothing, computers, or capital markets, China’s presence is felt every day.

China is big, it is growing, and it will influence the world in the years ahead.

For the United States and the world, the essential question is – how will China use its influence?

To answer that question, it is time to take our policy beyond opening doors to China’s membership into the international system: We need to urge China to become a responsible stakeholder in that system.

China has a responsibility to strengthen the international system that has enabled its success. In doing so, China could achieve the objective identified by Mr. Zheng: "to transcend the traditional ways for great powers to emerge."

As Secretary Rice has stated, the United States welcomes a confident, peaceful, and prosperous China, one that appreciates that its growth and development depends on constructive connections with the rest of the world. Indeed, we hope to intensify work with a China that not only adjusts to the international rules developed over the last century, but also joins us and others to address the challenges of the new century.

From China’s perspective, it would seem that its national interest would be much better served by working with us to shape the future international system.

If it isn’t clear why the United States should suggest a cooperative relationship with China, consider the alternatives. Picture the wide range of global challenges we face in the years ahead – terrorism and extremists exploiting Islam, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poverty, disease – and ask whether it would be easier or harder to handle those problems if the United States and China were cooperating or at odds.

For fifty years, our policy was to fence in the Soviet Union while its own internal contradictions undermined it. For thirty years, our policy has been to draw out the People’s Republic of China. As a result, the China of today is simply not the Soviet Union of the late 1940s:

·  It does not seek to spread radical, anti-American ideologies.

·  While not yet democratic, it does not see itself in a twilight conflict against democracy around the globe.

·  While at times mercantilist, it does not see itself in a death struggle with capitalism.

·  And most importantly, China does not believe that its future depends on overturning the fundamental order of the international system. In fact, quite the reverse: Chinese leaders have decided that their success depends on being networked with the modern world.

If the Cold War analogy does not apply, neither does the distant balance-of-power politics of 19^th Century Europe. The global economy of the 21^st Century is a tightly woven fabric. We are too interconnected to try to hold China at arm’s length, hoping to promote other powers in Asia at its expense. Nor would the other powers hold China at bay, initiating and terminating ties based on an old model of drawing-room diplomacy. The United States seeks constructive relations with all countries that do not threaten peace and security.

So if the templates of the past do not fit, how should we view China at the dawn of the 21^st Century?

On both sides, there is a gulf in perceptions. The overwhelming priority of China’s senior officials is to develop and modernize a China that still faces enormous internal challenges. While proud of their accomplishments, China’s leaders recognize their country’s perceived weaknesses, its rural poverty, and the challenges of political and social change. Two-thirds of China’s population – nearly 900 million people – are in poor rural areas, living mostly as subsistence farmers, and 200 million Chinese live on less than a dollar a day. In China, economic growth is seen as an internal imperative, not as a challenge to the United States.

Therefore, China clearly needs a benign international environment for its work at home. Of course, the Chinese expect to be treated with respect and will want to have their views and interests recognized. But China does not want a conflict with the United States.

Nevertheless, many Americans worry that the Chinese dragon will prove to be a fire-breather. There is a cauldron of anxiety about China.

The U.S. business community, which in the 1990s saw China as a land of opportunity, now has a more mixed assessment. Smaller companies worry about Chinese competition, rampant piracy, counterfeiting, and currency manipulation. Even larger U.S. businesses – once the backbone of support for economic engagement – are concerned that mercantilist Chinese policies will try to direct controlled markets instead of opening competitive markets. American workers wonder if they can compete.

China needs to recognize how its actions are perceived by others. China’s involvement with troublesome states indicates at best a blindness to consequences and at worst something more ominous. China’s actions – combined with a lack of transparency – can create risks. Uncertainties about how China will use its power will lead the United States – and others as well – to hedge relations with China. Many countries hope China will pursue a "Peaceful Rise," but none will bet their future on it.

For example, China’s rapid military modernization and increases in capabilities raise questions about the purposes of this buildup and China’s lack of transparency. The recent report by the U.S. Department of Defense on China’s military posture was not confrontational, although China’s reaction to it was. The U.S. report described facts, including what we know about China’s military, and discussed alternative scenarios. If China wants to lessen anxieties, it should openly explain its defense spending, intentions, doctrine, and military exercises.

Views about China are also shaped by its growing economic footprint. China has gained much from its membership in an open, rules-based international economic system, and the U.S. market is particularly important for China’s development strategy. Many gain from this trade, including millions of U.S. farmers and workers who produce the commodities, components, and capital goods that China is so voraciously consuming.

But no other country – certainly not those of the European Union or Japan – would accept a $162 billion bilateral trade deficit, contributing to a $665 billion global current account deficit. China – and others that sell to China – cannot take its access to the U.S. market for granted. Protectionist pressures are growing.

China has been more open than many developing countries, but there are increasing signs of mercantilism, with policies that seek to direct markets rather than opening them. The United States will not be able to sustain an open international economic system – or domestic U.S. support for such a system – without greater cooperation from China, as a stakeholder that shares responsibility on international economic issues.

For example, a responsible major global player shouldn’t tolerate rampant theft of intellectual property and counterfeiting, both of which strike at the heart of America’s knowledge economy. China’s pledges – including a statement just last week by President Hu in New York – to crack down on the criminals who ply this trade are welcome, but the results are not yet evident. China needs to fully live up to its commitments to markets where America has a strong competitive advantage, such as in services, agriculture, and certain manufactured goods. And while China’s exchange rate policy offered stability in the past, times have changed. China may have a global current account surplus this year of nearly $150 billion, among the highest in the world. This suggests that China’s recent policy adjustments are an initial step, but much more remains to be done to permit markets to adjust to imbalances. China also shares a strong interest with the United States in negotiating a successful WTO Doha agreement that opens markets and expands global growth.

China’s economic growth is driving its thirst for energy. In response, China is acting as if it can somehow "lock up" energy supplies around the world. This is not a sensible path to achieving energy security. Moreover, a mercantilist strategy leads to partnerships with regimes that hurt China’s reputation and lead others to question its intentions. In contrast, market strategies can lessen volatility, instability, and hoarding. China should work with the United States and others to develop diverse sources of energy, including through clean coal technology, nuclear, renewables, hydrogen, and biofuels. Our new Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate – as well as the bilateral dialogue conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy and China’s National Development and Reform Commission – offer practical mechanisms for this cooperation. We should also encourage the opening of oil and gas production in more places around the world. We can work on energy conservation and efficiency, including through standards for the many appliances made in China. Through the IEA we can strengthen the building and management of strategic reserves. We also have a common interest in secure transport routes and security in producing countries.

All nations conduct diplomacy to promote their national interests. Responsible stakeholders go further: They recognize that the international system sustains their peaceful prosperity, so they work to sustain that system. In its foreign policy, China has many opportunities to be a responsible stakeholder.

The most pressing opportunity is North Korea. Since hosting the Six-Party Talks at their inception in 2003, China has played a constructive role. This week we achieved a Joint Statement of Principles, with an agreement on the goal of "verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner." But the hard work of implementation lies ahead, and China should share our interest in effective and comprehensive compliance.

Moreover, the North Korea problem is about more than just the spread of dangerous weapons. Without broad economic and political reform, North Korea poses a threat to itself and others. It is time to move beyond the half century-old armistice on the Korean peninsula to a true peace, with regional security and development. A Korean peninsula without nuclear weapons opens the door to this future. Some 30 years ago America ended its war in Viet Nam. Today Viet Nam looks to the United States to help integrate it into the world market economic system so Viet Nam can improve the lives of its people. By contrast, North Korea, with a 50 year-old cold armistice, just falls further behind.

Beijing also has a strong interest in working with us to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles that can deliver them. The proliferation of danger will undermine the benign security environment and healthy international economy that China needs for its development.

China’s actions on Iran’s nuclear program will reveal the seriousness of China’s commitment to non-proliferation. And while we welcome China’s efforts to police its own behavior through new export controls on sensitive technology, we still need to see tough legal punishments for violators.

China and the United States can do more together in the global fight against terrorism. Chinese citizens have been victims of terror attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. China can help destroy the supply lines of global terrorism. We have made a good start by working together at the UN and searching for terrorist money in Chinese banks, but can expand our cooperation further.

China pledged $150 million in assistance to Afghanistan, and $25 million to Iraq. These pledges were welcome, and we look forward to their full implementation. China would build stronger ties with both through follow-on pledges. Other countries are assisting the new Iraqi government with major debt forgiveness, focusing attention on the $7 billion in Iraqi debt still held by Chinese state companies.

On my early morning runs in Khartoum, I saw Chinese doing tai chi exercises. I suspect they were in Sudan for the oil business. But China should take more than oil from Sudan – it should take some responsibility for resolving Sudan’s human crisis. It could work with the United States, the UN, and others to support the African Union’s peacekeeping mission, to provide humanitarian relief to Darfur, and to promote a solution to Sudan’s conflicts.

In Asia, China is already playing a larger role. The United States respects China’s interests in the region, and recognizes the useful role of multilateral diplomacy in Asia. But concerns will grow if China seeks to maneuver toward a predominance of power. Instead, we should work together with ASEAN, Japan, Australia, and others for regional security and prosperity through the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

China’s choices about Taiwan will send an important message, too. We have made clear that our "one China" policy remains based on the three communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act. It is important for China to resolve its differences with Taiwan peacefully.

The United States, Japan, and China will need to cooperate effectively together on both regional and global challenges. Given China’s terrible losses in World War II, I appreciate the sensitivity of historical issues with Japan. But as I have told my Chinese colleagues, I have observed some sizeable gaps in China’s telling of history, too. When I visited the "918" museum at the site of the 1931 "Manchurian Incident," I noted that the chronological account jumped from 1941 to the Soviet offensive against Japan in August 1945, overlooking the United States involvement in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945! Perhaps we could start to ease some misapprehensions by opening a three-way dialogue among historians.

Clearly, there are many common interests and opportunities for cooperation. But some say America’s commitment to democracy will preclude long-term cooperation with China. Let me suggest why this need not be so.

Freedom lies at the heart of what America is… as a nation, we stand for what President Bush calls the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. As I have seen over the 25 years since I lived in Hong Kong, Asians have also pressed for more freedom and built many more democracies. Indeed, President Hu and Premier Wen are talking about the importance of China strengthening the rule of law and developing democratic institutions.

We do not urge the cause of freedom to weaken China. To the contrary, President Bush has stressed that the terrible experience of 9/11 has driven home that in the absence of freedom, unhealthy societies will breed deadly cancers. In his Second Inaugural, President Bush recognized that democratic institutions must reflect the values and culture of diverse societies. As he said, "Our goal… is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

Being born ethnically Chinese does not predispose people against democracy – just look at Taiwan’s vibrant politics. Japan and South Korea have successfully blended a Confucian heritage with modern democratic principles.

Closed politics cannot be a permanent feature of Chinese society. It is simply not sustainable – as economic growth continues, better-off Chinese will want a greater say in their future, and pressure builds for political reform:

·  China has one umbrella labor union, but waves of strikes.

·  A party that came to power as a movement of peasants now confronts violent rural protests, especially against corruption.

·  A government with massive police powers cannot control spreading crime.

Some in China believe they can secure the Communist Party’s monopoly on power through emphasizing economic growth and heightened nationalism. This is risky and mistaken.

China needs a peaceful political transition to make its government responsible and accountable to its people. Village and grassroots elections are a start. They might be expanded – perhaps to counties and provinces – as a next step. China needs to reform its judiciary. It should open government processes to the involvement of civil society and stop harassing journalists who point out problems. China should also expand religious freedom and make real the guarantees of rights that exist on paper – but not in practice.

Ladies and Gentlemen: How we deal with China’s rising power is a central question in American foreign policy.

In China and the United States, Mr. Zheng’s idea of a "peaceful rise" will spur vibrant debate. The world will look to the evidence of actions.

Tonight I have suggested that the U.S. response should be to help foster constructive action by transforming our thirty-year policy of integration: We now need to encourage China to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system. As a responsible stakeholder, China would be more than just a member – it would work with us to sustain the international system that has enabled its success.

Cooperation as stakeholders will not mean the absence of differences – we will have disputes that we need to manage. But that management can take place within a larger framework where the parties recognize a shared interest in sustaining political, economic, and security systems that provide common benefits.

To achieve this transformation of the Sino-American relationship, this Administration – and those that follow it – will need to build the foundation of support at home. That’s particularly why I wanted to join you tonight. You hear the voices that perceive China solely through the lens of fear. But America succeeds when we look to the future as an opportunity, not when we fear what the future might bring. To succeed now, we will need all of you to press both the Chinese and your fellow citizens.

When President Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, our relationship with China was defined by what we were both against. Now we have the opportunity to define our relationship by what are both for.

We have many common interests with China. But relationships built only on a coincidence of interests have shallow roots. Relationships built on shared interests and shared values are deep and lasting. We can cooperate with the emerging China of today, even as we work for the democratic China of tomorrow.

来源时间：2020/3/31   发布时间：2005/9/21

旧文章ID：21131

作者：Peter Beinart  来源：The Atlantic

After scuttling its partnership with Beijing on public health, the U.S. was unprepared for the pandemic.

The lesson of COVID-19, influential politicians and commentators are claiming, is that the United States must delink itself from China. “China unleashed this plague on the world,” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas recently told Sean Hannity, “and China has to be held accountable.” Cotton, who has proposed legislation to ban Americans from buying Chinese pharmaceuticals, isn’t alone. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana has urged Donald Trump to boost tariffs on Chinese products and put the money—which he incorrectly thinks would come from Chinese exporters rather than American importers—into a fund for Americans hurt by the coronavirus. In a recent essay in The American Interest, the political scientist Andrew Michta used the virus to demand a “hard decoupling” from China. Citing that essay approvingly, my Atlantic colleague Shadi Hamid recently argued, “After the crisis, whenever after is, the relationship with China cannot and should not go back to normal.”

These arguments are exactly backwards. The relationship between America and China was not “normal” before COVID-19. It was in rapid decline. And that decline has left Americans more vulnerable to the disease. The lesson of this plague isn’t that America should stop cooperating with China. It’s that America must rebuild the public-health cooperation that the Trump administration helped destroy.

U.S.-Chinese collaboration against infectious disease isn’t a globalist fantasy. It has proved immensely effective in the past. And one of its greatest champions was George W. Bush.

When SARS hit southern China in late 2002, the Bush administration played a crucial role in Beijing’s response. Deborah Seligsohn, a Villanova University political scientist who worked on science and health issues at the U.S. embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007, told me that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta sent 40 experts—under the auspices of the World Health Organization—to assist China in battling SARS. “They provided the majority of the international advice in combatting the disease,” Seligsohn said. The Americans helped their Chinese colleagues “create records, do contact tracing, do proper isolation—all the stuff you needed to do.” The effort, she said, “turned out to be strikingly successful.” SARS was largely contained to Asia. Only 27 Americans were infected; none died.

The SARS success story produced what the Brown University medical anthropologist Katherine Mason calls an “explosion of formal cooperation” between the United States and China in fighting infectious disease. As Jennifer Huang Bouey of the Rand Corporation has documented, Bush’s secretary of health and human services visited Beijing in October 2003 and established a partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Health. In 2004, the U.S. and China began a collaboration “to build Chinese capacity in influenza surveillance,” as Bouey put it. The number of U.S. government employees working on public health in China grew dramatically, with some CDC officials even given offices inside their Chinese counterpart (which, in homage to the American agency, is also called the CDC).

These efforts saved American as well as Chinese lives. When a new virus, H1N1, broke out in 2009, Bouey noted, “American and Chinese health authorities shared information and technology to facilitate national monitoring of H1N1’s spread and to develop a vaccine.” When the H7N9 virus emerged four years later, “the Chinese and American CDCs collaborated throughout … by sharing epidemiological data and engaging in joint research.” When Chinese researchers developed a vaccine, they quickly shared it with their American colleagues, who produced a version in the United States.

By Barack Obama’s second term, the United States and China were expanding this public-health cooperation to the rest of the world. When Ebola hit West Africa in 2014, American and Chinese personnel worked together at a Chinese-built laboratory in Sierra Leone and off-loaded supplies from a Chinese transport plane in Liberia. As the Carter Center has noted, many of the health experts whom China dispatched to fight Ebola had been trained by the Americans whom the Bush administration had sent to Beijing a decade earlier.

Once again, these joint efforts saved lives. From 2014 to 2016, 28,000 people in West Africa contracted Ebola, far fewer than the 1.4 million the U.S. CDC had predicted near the beginning of the outbreak. In August 2014, 40 percent of Americans told pollsters that they expected a “large outbreak” of Ebola in the United States. Ultimately, only a single American died. On Obama’s final trip to China in 2016, the two governments agreed to jointly finance a headquarters for the African Union’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention so that the continent could better fight infectious diseases itself.

The Trump administration is now trying to prevent that headquarters from being built. That’s just one example of the wrecking ball it has taken to public-health cooperation with Beijing. In 2018, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was “dramatically downsizing” the global “epidemic prevention activities” Obama had launched following the Ebola crisis. This year, even as the coronavirus outbreak was raging, Trump proposed cutting American funding for WHO in half.

These cuts have taken a particular toll on American initiatives in China. Since Trump took office, both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health have reduced their staff in Beijing. The National Science Foundation has shut its office in the country entirely. The sentiment inside the Trump administration, Bouey told me, is that “if you have collaborative research with Chinese scientists, you’re helping China to build their capacity, and that’s not good for the U.S., because China is a strategic competitor.”

This hard decoupling on public-health matters almost certainly undermined the U.S. government’s initial understanding of COVID-19. To be sure, Beijing responded to the outbreak with a disastrous cover-up, followed by a harsh quarantine. It repeatedly and inexcusably delayed allowing a WHO delegation into Wuhan. Nonetheless, academics who study U.S.-Chinese cooperation on public health told me that had experts from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health maintained close contact with their Chinese counterparts, those informal channels would have given the United States much better information in the virus’s early days.

“Five years earlier,” Bouey said, “CDC and NIH officials would have been on the ground in Wuhan.” Seligsohn insisted that American officials during the Bush years “would have had a better sense of whether disease was being contained.” Elanah Uretsky, a medical anthropologist at Brandeis University who focuses on China, suggested that “the cooperation on health projects between the U.S. and China that existed before the Trump administration could have helped to pick up the virus sooner.” This week, Reuters reported that among the positions the Trump administration defunded was that of a medical epidemiologist who had been embedded inside China’s CDC. An American who previously occupied that role told the news service that “if someone had been there, public-health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”

Now that COVID-19 is sweeping across the United States, cooperation between Washington and Beijing remains essential. “It’s hard to understate the importance of the U.S.-China relationship in getting through this,” Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me. Since China—after its mistaken early attempts to suppress information—has gotten the virus under control, Inglesby said, “we need to learn from them about what’s going to work. Are they finding ways of returning to normal life without a vaccine? What did China do in terms of social distancing that made the most difference? We can’t and shouldn’t do what they did in terms of movement restrictions and compulsory action, but understanding what they did that we could emulate is very important.” Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance within the U.S. Agency for International Development during Obama’s second term, told me that the United States should bring Chinese doctors to every American city seriously affected by the coronavirus to explain how they managed COVID-19 cases.

In Italy, Chinese doctors are doing exactly that. China is also sending large quantities of protective equipment to Europe now that its enormous manufacturing capacity no longer needs to be directed exclusively toward its own sick. Beijing’s intentions aren’t purely humanitarian, of course. It’s not only donating supplies; it’s selling them. But less of that equipment is entering the United States because, as Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics has documented, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on almost $5 billion worth of Chinese medical products. The administration sheepishly lifted some of these tariffs when COVID-19 hit the United States. But, Bown notes, “many critical medical products from China remain subject to tariffs.” Plus, even the tariffs that have been suspended are set to return, thus making America an unreliable market. Trump’s protectionism, Bown observes, “creates perverse incentives for Chinese medical suppliers to make American customers their last choice.”

American doctors and nurses need masks, goggles, gloves, gowns, and thermometers now. That Trump’s tariffs are already making these supplies harder to procure underscores the absurdity of Representative Banks’s call for hiking tariffs even higher in retaliation for the “China virus.” Sure, the United States should, over time, boost its capacity to produce vital medical supplies. But a hard decoupling in which keeping Americans healthy no longer depends on Chinese products and knowledge is a dangerous fantasy. When I asked Brandeis’s Uretsky about Senator Cotton’s call for banning Americans from buying Chinese drugs, she noted that many of the drugs America already produces rely on Chinese raw materials.

Hard decouplers might also contemplate the possibility that Chinese scientists will create the first COVID-19 vaccine, as was the case with H7N9 in 2013. Konyndyk said it’s urgent that the U.S. and China help forge an international agreement to ensure rules for coronavirus-vaccine distribution, no matter which country’s scientists first create it. A world in which vaccines are distributed quickly across borders is far safer for ordinary Americans than a world in which countries hoard them. But that requires cooperation between the United States and China, something Trump’s anti-Chinese insults make far harder.

With brutal force, COVID-19 is clarifying two realities that run directly counter to Trump’s worldview. The first is that in a deeply interconnected world, the safety of ordinary Americans is often better protected by intensifying global cooperation than by buttressing national sovereignty. Some elements of the U.S.-China relationship are, indeed, zero-sum. When China fortifies islands in the South China Sea, its regional power goes up; America’s goes down. But nothing China has done on Mischief Reef has ever tanked the U.S. economy or forced millions of Americans to shelter in their homes. It is now obvious that the two ways through which Chinese behavior most threatens ordinary Americans—pandemics and climate change—do not obey the zero-sum logic that Trump and his ideological allies favor. The same virus that devastated Wuhan is now devastating New York. The rising seas that imperil Miami also imperil Guangzhou. Deeper collaboration between the world’s two superpowers is the logical response to these mammoth common threats. And on infectious disease, we know that such collaboration works.

The second reality the coronavirus is laying bare is that the balance of knowledge and power in today’s globalized world has changed. When SARS hit in 2003, the United States was China’s tutor. Now America’s doctors and scientists are desperate to learn how their Chinese counterparts vanquished the coronavirus in Wuhan. If America’s factories were the arsenal of democracy during World War II, it is more and more clear that China’s factories will be the arsenal of global public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift would be jarring to any U.S. president. But it is particularly threatening to a president who flirts openly with white supremacy. It’s not coincidental that the White House has become a geyser of anti-Chinese bigotry at the very moment America needs China most. Trump’s rhetoric reflects an inability to cope with a geopolitical transition that, to his supporters, is also a racial transition—the kind of racial transition many of them elected Trump to prevent.

The lesson of this plague is not only that the United States must cooperate more deeply with China. It is also that the United States will be less able than in the past to dictate the terms on which that cooperation occurs. Trump, Cotton, and other hard decouplers may find these realities excruciating. But the more they resist them, the more Americans will die.

PETER BEINART is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York.

来源时间：2020/3/31   发布时间：2020/3/28

旧文章ID：21129