WASHINGTON — When President Trump took the rostrum on the White Home briefing room one afternoon final week, his ready remarks included a reference
WASHINGTON — When President Trump took the rostrum on the White Home briefing room one afternoon final week, his ready remarks included a reference to the “corona virus.” However a close-up {photograph} revealed that Mr. Trump had used one among his signature Sharpies to cross out the phrase “corona,” altering the phrase to “Chinese language virus.”
Mr. Trump was scathing as he accused Beijing of concealing the outbreak first detected in Wuhan that has develop into a pandemic now paralyzing the US. “Actually, the world is paying an enormous value for what they did,” he mentioned. And the following day, he was joined at a White Home briefing by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who accused China’s authorities of distorting very important well being knowledge and mentioned its response “creates threat to individuals all around the globe.”
The withering criticism is an abrupt change in tone for a president who has lengthy sought to remain on pleasant phrases along with his Chinese language counterpart, Xi Jinping, and who initially praised Mr. Xi’s authorities for “doing a really skilled job” towards the epidemic. However as Mr. Trump and prime American officers toughen their condemnations of Mr. Xi’s authorities, nationwide safety and public well being specialists concern that the 2 world powers are heading into a brand new Chilly Warfare that might significantly undermine joint efforts to quash the virus and salvage the worldwide economic system.
Even some well being officers within the Trump administration have warned that denouncing China’s authorities may make it extra immune to sharing correct knowledge in regards to the virus. China has shared the genome sequence of the virus, and Chinese language scientists have written many public papers on the virus, even when officers initially lined it up. China additionally has the facility to intervene with medical provide chains into the US, and its financial insurance policies are essential to the broader world economic system.
Eswar Prasad, a China knowledgeable and professor of commerce coverage at Cornell College, known as the brand new hostility “dispiriting.”
“The U.S.-China relationship has deteriorated to a brand new post-Tiananmen low at a very unlucky time, when the 2 nations should be becoming a member of forces to restrict the ravages wrought by the pandemic on public well being, financial exercise and monetary markets,” he mentioned.
Kelly Magsamen, a former diplomat and deputy assistant secretary of protection for Asian and Pacific affairs throughout the Obama administration, added that “a posture of competitors” undercuts efforts to comprise the virus. “Relatively than China bashing only for the sake of China bashing, we have to be working collectively to get this below management,” she mentioned.
However China hawks see the pandemic as an opportunity to highlight what they name the sinister nature of China’s Communist Get together, flip worldwide opinion towards it and fight its anti-American conspiracy theories.
“It’s apparent from the info that there’s an data sizzling struggle and an financial sizzling struggle that we’re at present in,” mentioned Stephen Ok. Bannon, a former Trump White Home strategist and main conservative critic of the Chinese language Communist Get together.
China’s authorities, Mr. Bannon added, “has confirmed to the world they’re an existential menace to the Chinese language individuals and to the world, not simply the US.”
Mr. Bannon in impact speaks for the numerous senior Trump administration officers who’ve lengthy pressed for a extra confrontational posture towards Beijing. These officers warn {that a} fast-growing China, below Mr. Xi’s more and more authoritarian rule, seeks navy, financial and technological domination over the US and its allies.
They embrace Mr. Pompeo, a hard-liner who employs the time period “Wuhan virus” regardless of widespread criticism of that phrase, which incenses Chinese leaders. Mr. Pompeo has condemned Beijing for suppressing initial reports about the illness, including by local doctors whom the government reprimanded for posting about it on social media.
Another influential hawk is Matthew Pottinger, Mr. Trump’s deputy national security adviser and the main architect of strategic policy on China in the White House. Mr. Pottinger is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered China, including its 2003 SARS crisis, and chronicled government efforts to suppress information about that epidemic. He has publicly recounted being “punched in the face” by “a government goon” while reporting on corruption in Beijing.
And in an appearance at the Heritage Foundation this month, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, focused his commentary about the virus on what he called China’s culpability for its ferocious spread, saying “this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up.”
But some of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers, including the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the director of his National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, believe that antagonizing China over strategic issues threatens economic cooperation that is required in an interconnected global economy in which China holds many of the cards.
The hardened messaging from Washington has infuriated China’s government, whose officials and news outlets have fired back, accusing the United States of an attempt to deflect blame offshore — and even of producing the virus: This month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman pushed a conspiracy theory online that the U.S. Army might have taken the virus to Wuhan.
China also has significant leverage over global health supplies. American officials have criticized China for buying up a vast portion of the global supply of medical masks, and called for bringing the supply chains that produce pharmaceuticals, medical devices and protective gear back to the United States.
“President Trump is in a very difficult situation, because he still needs the cooperation of the C.C.P. on many things — not just on the economy but on this virus,” Mr. Bannon said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “We are still coupled.”
Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge as much on Friday, when he couched some of his earlier criticism of China’s government. “I respect China and I respect President Xi,” Mr. Trump said, calling the Chinese leader — with whom he has spent months trying to negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement — “a friend of mine.”
Such comments were more common from Mr. Trump a few weeks ago, when few known coronavirus cases existed in the United States and large parts of China were under lockdown. But the language shifted as the United States proved incapable of halting the virus’s spread, and China appeared to be getting its outbreak under control, emboldening officials to chastise Washington.
Some Trump officials and Republicans in Congress say the crisis has underscored an urgent need to reduce America’s economic dependence on Beijing. The White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has helped draft an executive order that would require the federal government to buy more American-made pharmaceuticals.
Some Republicans say an article published this month by China’s state-run Xinhua news service amounted to a threat that America could lose access to vital drugs made in China.
“They can threaten to cut off our pharmaceutical supplies,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, told Fox News on March 13. “That’s a tremendous amount of leverage.”
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, both Republicans, have introduced legislation that would “end U.S. dependence on China for pharmaceutical manufacturing,” as a statement from Mr. Cotton’s office put it.
Trump officials are also gauging the effect of the coronavirus and a related spike in tensions on their trade talks. Chinese and American officials have not publicly said whether China will be able to meet a commitment it made under an interim trade pact in January to purchase $200 billion in American goods over the next two years, but widespread economic disruptions make that appear unlikely.
The current friction is as much about political rhetoric and national pride as it is about economics, however. Senior administration officials are outraged over China’s propaganda campaign playing up its efforts at sending medical supplies around the world — a clear attempt to whitewash the party’s reputation both at home and abroad after a bungled response to the outbreak, American officials say.
The officials also say the United States might have been able to help contain the virus had China not initially refused to admit international experts, including ones from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, into Wuhan. Chinese interference “probably cost the world community two months to respond,” Mr. O’Brien said last month.
Geng Shuang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, rejected such talk on Friday. “Their claims of China lacking openness and transparency are simply fact-distorting,” he said.
American officials are also angry that Chinese leaders are doing little to acknowledge that the United States sent 18 tons of medical supplies to China on charter airplanes used to evacuate American citizens from Wuhan. In early February, the United States also pledged $100 million of aid to China and other nations to fight the virus.
A new strain on relations came last week when China expelled almost all American citizens reporting for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Some conservatives, as well as Trump administration officials, are unhappy with the White House’s talk of a “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus, saying that such language should target China’s rulers more specifically. “I honestly believe we’re getting the nomenclature wrong,” Mr. Bannon said. “This is not a Chinese virus. Ths is a ‘C.C.P. Virus.’ The Chinese people are the victim of this.”
Asian-Americans also say the “Chinese virus” label has led to incidents of racial slurs and bodily assaults.
Many China hawks say broader fears of antagonizing China for concern of shedding its cooperation are overstated. “China actually doesn’t need to assist us,” mentioned Daniel Blumenthal, the director of Asian Research on the American Enterprise Institute. “They’ve each curiosity in protecting up and distracting and blaming the U.S.”
However Ryan Hass, a senior Asia director within the Obama administration’s Nationwide Safety Council who’s now on the Brookings Establishment, famous that in earlier world crises, the US and China discovered methods to look previous their variations and are available collectively.
“In a standard functioning administration, my recommendation could be to determine sensible methods the place the U.S. and China can pool sources and experience to assist get the worldwide unfold of coronavirus below management,” he mentioned. “Such an method is a bridge too far for the present administration, sadly.”
“To be clear, there may be a lot criticism to be levied towards China, and there might be loads of time for score-keeping,” he added. “However now will not be that point.”
Ana Swanson contributed reporting.