China have also claimed Trump’s “Chinese virus” label to be a smear on the country, while the tensions are also believed to have contributed to Beijing’s decision to expel American journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“China is not an enemy of the US. The Chinese people are friends of the American people, the cooperation between China and the US will benefit both two countries and is essential for the advancement and development of all mankind,” said Victor Zhikai Gao, vice-president of the Beijing-based think tank, the Center for China and Globalisation.

The death toll in the US had reached 201 by Friday morning, with over 15,000 cases, while China reported a second consecutive day of no new domestic cases on Friday.

Xu Hongcai, the deputy director of the Economic Policy Commission at the China Association of Policy Science, told the same forum in Beijing on Thursday, that it was now necessary for President Xi Jinping to speak with Trump to de-escalate the rising tensions.

The bilateral relationship, though, suffered a blow this week after a phone call between China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo produced more differences than agreements, according to statements from Beijing and Washington.

Su Hao, director of the Centre for Strategic and Peace Studies at China Foreign Affairs University, said the China-US relationship is “at a status of severe confrontation and cold war-like”.

“It is apparent that a mental pattern of confronting China still exists in the US, that has brought obvious harm to China-US relations,” Su said, who called for China and the US to seek to repair ties via a cooperation centring around making face masks and developing vaccines.

Teng Jianqun, director of the department for American studies at the China Institute of International Studies, a think tank within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, agreed that both sides had not yet completely moved away from a cold war mentality.

“It is not China-US relations that have a problem, but people’s minds,” he said.

Xia Liping, dean and professor of the School of Political Sciences and International Relations at Tongji University in Shanghai, said Beijing and Washington should carry out a joint investigation into the origin of the virus, instead of resorting to a potentially harmful war of words.

He also said that China should provide help, if requested by the US, while the two countries should combine their efforts to help other nations, especially developing countries, to contain the outbreak.

“Currently China has become the largest safe island in the world, and the US is still the most powerful country [in terms of] containment capabilities,” he said. “Trust is worth more than gold now.”