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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Coronavirus pandemic a ‘critical opportunity’ for US-China cooperation, report says

  • America should take steps to improve ties with China in health security, according to report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
  • It says that while this will not be an easy task in the ‘stark and forbidding’ climate of relations, the opportunities outweigh the risks

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Although the US and China are in a period of strategic competition, cooperation on health security is “more important than ever”, the report says. Photo: Reuters
Simone McCarthy
The US should take concrete steps to expand cooperation with China in health security, building on their ties in this area and momentum from last month’s leaders’ summit, a new report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies says.
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“The Covid-19 pandemic, with its novel nature and devastating impact globally, represents a critical opportunity for bilateral cooperation,” co-authors Yanzhong Huang and Scott Kennedy wrote in the report for the Washington think tank, published on Wednesday.

“Although the United States and China have entered a period of strategic competition, bilateral cooperation on health security is more important than ever.”

After consulting experts in China, members of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security and a dedicated working group of US-China experts, the authors laid out an agenda for cooperation. They evaluated the feasibility of working together in areas such as Covid-19 vaccines, travel rules, public health infrastructure, biosafety and biosecurity, and supply chain resilience.
Such cooperation could kick off with a visit from a senior US leader to Beijing, in a similar vein to American climate envoy John Kerry’s trip to China to discuss climate change cooperation earlier this year.
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“Just as the two sides have begun to cooperate in tackling climate change, they should be able to do so in a similarly pressing issue area,” the authors said.
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