US Politicians aim to turn COVID-19 combat into political war against China ‘vicious’
By Zhou Qing
Some US politicians, including Rick Scott, are trying to turn a public health disaster that nations should face together into a political war against China.
Senator Rick Scott, the once CEO of hospital network Columbia/HCA, may think he has some say on public health issues. He insisted that China’s information about novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) can’t be trusted and demanded the World Health Organization (WHO) issue a “full report,” in a tweet he wrote, tagging the Global Times.
By writing a letter to the WHO, and pressuring the WHO to do something it has already been doing, Scott’s action is nothing more than whining for attention and support.
Using the COVID-19 disaster faced by all of humanity as an opportunity to lash the Chinese political system has become a bipartisan “stereotype.” Aside from some who try to rub salt in the wounds like Scott, other politicians, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were busy touting anti-China and anti-Huawei sentiment while Chinese people are fighting the epidemic.
In recent years, amid the new wave of protectionism and unilateralism in the US, targeting China has become an political buy-in for politicians. One after another, like a competition, politicians staged various China threat theories to gain political capital.
The result is that China and the US, two countries had close engagement and cooperation, started drifting apart, with the “effort” of politicians like Rick Scott, wagging their tongues to sow discord between the two countries, especially in the public health area.
Jennifer Bouey, senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, mentioned during a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on the COVID-19 outbreak on February 5 that healthcare professionals in China and the US have collaborated in every single pandemic and epidemic in China, but in the last couple of years, this relationship has faltered due to the US-China relationship. She believed that the current difficulty in containing the virus is the reduction of collaboration between China and the US in the last two to three years.
An epidemic is not a single country’s business. It requires close cooperation among the international community. In this sense, no country should cut itself off from international public health cooperation or undermine the WHO, an organization built to propel cooperation among nations in terms of public health. However, according to reports, US President Donald Trump is seeking to chop half of US funding for the WHO.
Scott, who has been showing his concern over the WHO and how the agency is fulfilling its duty in China, should offer some proof that his “WHO complex” is not just another topic he is using to win political support. If he truly cares about the WHO, he should support it first, or at least publicly oppose Trump’s WHO funding cuts. Otherwise, he is just another vile US politician only interested in adding insult to China’s injury with no intention to help.
