China’s coronavirus missteps open door for US, but it fails to capitalise: report
- When it comes to global health leadership, neither Beijing nor Washington appears to be winning the battle for influence and soft power
- ‘The US has messed up so badly with its own response, it’s not going to get a good reputation now. It can’t even get its own population vaccinated’
Risks inherent in China’s zero-Covid strategy, and Beijing’s shortcomings in handling the pandemic, provide a unique opportunity for the US to strengthen its global health leadership and diminished geopolitical reputation, according to experts and a report released on Thursday.
Behind recent statements out of Washington and Beijing about helping humanity and watching out for world’s underprivileged – however valid – is a less noble battle for global influence and soft power, the ability to convince rather than arm-twist others.
“Despite its relative success early in the pandemic, China now appears to be stumbling,” said Yanzhong Huang, global health fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the report, The COVID-19 Pandemic and Chinese Global Health Leadership. “China’s vulnerability in manoeuvring for global health leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic presents the United States with an opportunity to reassert its global leadership.”
Scaling up exports of phenomenally effective US vaccines, dispatching experts to badly hit areas, working with local civic groups and more effectively countering Chinese misinformation are ways that Washington can bolster its soft power and showcase democracy and American technology, analysts said – with a particular eye to Southeast Asia, where US-Chinese competition for influence is greatest.
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But taking full advantage of that opportunity also requires the US to do something far more difficult than flooding foreign countries with vaccine doses. To effectively burnish its dented global reputation, damaged by flip-flop policies and former president Donald Trump’s America-first approach, it needs to overcome deep political divisions and anti-vaccine forces at home before effectively countering China’s Covid diplomacy abroad, analysts said.