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Coronavirus pandemic: All stories
OpinionComment
Xu Xiaobing
Xu Xiaobing

Opinion | China has led the world in 2020 to fight the coronavirus while the US has been in retreat

  • Instead of the pandemic being ‘China’s Chernobyl’, Beijing has confronted the problem head-on
  • While China has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19 and sought to boost the global economy, the US has merely led its allies to contain China

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A container with Covid-19 vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech arrives at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, near Jakarta, in their first shipment to Indonesia on December 6. Photo: Reuters
Xu Xiaobing

Time magazine has already named 2020 “the worst year ever”. This might well be a true reflection of the current American mood.

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In 2020, US President Donald Trump’s administration let Covid-19 run unchecked at home and the US became the leading country in terms of infections and deaths, with more than 17 million cases and 310,000 deaths. In the meantime, the US continued to quit or inflict damage on important international institutions.

In a year that is bound to be remembered for the misery and chaos caused by the pandemic, the US notified the United Nations on July 6 of its exit from the World Health Organization. In a year when the world economy was hit hard, the US continued to cripple the World Trade Organization by blocking new appointments to the Appellate Body, the last member of which departed on November 30.
The US formally withdrew from the Paris climate agreement on November 4 and the Open Skies Treaty on November 22. Meanwhile, for China, 2020 was the year it led the world’s response to the pandemic.

Instead of being “China’s Chernobyl” – a term used by US national security adviser Robert O‘Brien to describe China’s handling of the pandemic – Beijing confronted the challenge head-on and led the world in identifying and fighting the pandemic.

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Small businesses still struggling eight months after Wuhan’s Covid-19 lockdown was lifted

Small businesses still struggling eight months after Wuhan’s Covid-19 lockdown was lifted
Wuhan, my hometown, was the first to identify the coronavirus. It was the only city with a population of more than 10 million to be completely quarantined before the national Spring Festival holiday, and the lockdown lasted more than 2½ months.
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