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Coronavirus pandemic: All stories
OpinionComment
Chi Wang
Chi Wang

Opinion | How China is losing the world’s trust following its cover-up of the coronavirus crisis

  • Beijing failed to go public with the true scale of the pandemic, hampering other nations’ ability to respond in time
  • China’s rise on the global stage was made possible by the goodwill of the rest of the world, and trust that had been hard earned should not be so easily squandered

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Chi Wang

The lacklustre response of the Trump administration to the coronavirus pandemic and its failure to live up to the traditional US role during a global crisis has led some to wonder whether China can fill this void.

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While the US may not be pleasing its allies by halting exports of protective equipment, China is not going to find it easy to step into the US’ global leadership role. The breach of trust that China exhibited in concealing the onset of the pandemic will have far-reaching implications on its aspirations for global leadership. 
China’s closest allies and partners demonstrated their lack of faith in Beijing’s ability to handle the virus early on by closing their borders and repatriating citizens – the measures that China criticised the United States for taking. North Korea – China’s only ally in the formal sense of the term – sealed its borders in late January.

While Sino-Russia relations have been growing increasingly intimate under President Xi Jinping and his counterpart Vladimir Putin, Russia closed its direct borders with China in late January and suspended visa-free travel from China on February 2. Iran, a key strategic partner of China, stopped all flights between the two countries on January 31.

Pakistan, also a key partner of China’s, did not repatriate its citizens, but this choice was motivated more by Pakistan’s own public health deficiencies than faith in China’s ability to handle the pandemic.

As the pandemic wore on, the narrative over the virus became focused on the decision of President Donald Trump and some of his officials to label the virus the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”. While Washington and Beijing pointed fingers, China’s partners became critical of the regime’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
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