US hard-liners use outbreak to hurt ties with China

In the global fight against the novel coronavirus, no country can say it has won until all countries are free from the threat of the pandemic.

There is a consensus that China and the United States, as the two major powers, should stop mutual attacks, suspicions and accusations and work together to combat the pandemic.

However, seeing the trouble their country is getting into, some US politicians are shifting the blame on China and poisoning Sino-US ties. This has continuously interfered with bilateral cooperation to fight the epidemic.

US hard-liners do not want the need for bilateral anti-epidemic cooperation to upset their plan to tighten strategic competition with China. Instead, they have been trying to use the epidemic to intensify the competition. In fact, they have been taking advantage of the lack of firsthand information about China in the US and secretly spreading rumors to stimulate the public and politicians to pour groundless criticisms on China, inviting a fierce response. The escalating war of words is giving them further leverage to lash out at China, making it a scapegoat for all the problems in the US.

The election year in the US has in particular increased irrational talk about China, poisoning bilateral cooperation and dealing a serious blow to global confidence.

Since the novel coronavirus' global outbreak, the US has not sent any signal for enhancing global unity and cooperation, nor has it undertaken global leadership for fighting the pandemic. Instead, it has adopted a buck-passing tactic to defame the World Health Organization and block global cooperation.

The US' behavior after the outbreak shows that its hegemony is fading. In the face of powerful nontraditional security enemies such as the novel coronavirus epidemic, the US' past hegemonic model characterized by strategic competition and zero-sum game can neither protect its own people well nor make it shoulder the new international responsibilities under globalization.

Predictably, the international strategic community will rethink global leadership in the wake of the outbreak. The lack of leadership endangers world stability and mankind's ability to solve international problems. In the process of globalization with declining hegemony, who will bear the leadership responsibility and whether the world will be more turbulent should be carefully considered.

FU YING, FORMER VICE-MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS