Coronavirus crisis caught Donald Trump and Xi Jinping unprepared, and US-China relations are going from bad to worse

Trump’s ineptitude at managing the Covid-19 crisis has been equalled only by his agonising daily briefings. Xi, meanwhile, is trying to divert attention from Beijing’s early lapses by authorising propaganda to restore China’s image

Douglas H. Paal

Published: 3:00am, 22 Apr 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Three months ago, I was asked if I had any thoughts to share on US-China relations after the signing of the phase-one trade agreement. This was just before the whole world’s attention turned to the coronavirus disease, Covid-19. I had a hard time trying to think of something positive to say that would not seem like a vain hope.

In the 1950s, Tom Lehrer, a Harvard student who would later become an MIT professor, penned a satirical song in which young graduates celebrate the beginning of their professional lives, before “sliding down the razor blade of life”. That line pretty well sums up what the past three months have felt like for me and, I suspect, many others.

Who could have predicted that nature’s greatest challenge in a century to the health of humanity would come when two of the most ill-prepared men are in the highest offices of the two greatest powers on Earth?

With the signing of the trade agreement, US President Donald Trump seemed to think he had China where he wanted it: buying more American goods, forced to accept extensive tariffs on its own exports, and subject to further economic and other pressure tactics.

Trump could ride to his re-election on the back of a strong stock market (not immediately threatened by further trade disruptions) and record employment, all the while claiming to have taken on China at long last and won.

China’s President Xi Jinping, for his part, could bless the trade agreement, thereby capping at relatively little cost unwelcome American pressure on China’s economy, while enjoying the sight of Trump dismantling the foundations of America’s post-war power. China frequently refers to the current time as an “historic period of strategic opportunity”.

With Trump, that means an America that is abandoning international leadership and strong alliance management, creating a vacuum of power that China is at long last ready to fill. Xi promises to restore China’s dignity and fulfil its historic destiny. Why would he want to get in the way of Trump’s re-election?

Will a Biden nomination in US presidential race reassure China? Not really

To my eye, Trump is unprepared as a leader of any entity that might involve sharing and sacrifice. He increasingly looks like a cheesy version of Benito Mussolini. Jutting out his jaw, rambling nonsensically and narcissistically, promising everyone everything, while taking the country towards an awful outcome.

All the while, Trump has been accomplishing even less than Mussolini did, say, in running the railways.

Oh, and the stock market and employment in the US have set new records, but for lows, not highs. His ineptitude at managing the Covid-19 crisis has been equalled only by his insistence on turning his mismanagement into an agonising daily reality show on the previously abandoned White House press-room stage.

On top of all that, he has decided to undermine the World Health Organisation in the midst of a pandemic, after praising it earlier. This is folly of a sort that cries out for intervention before he does any more damage. It’s on a par with denouncing China while alternatively praising it and asking Beijing for increased assistance with medical equipment.

Xi is unprepared to lead in a different sense. Unlike Deng Xiaoping, who lowered China’s international ambitions while strengthening it materially at home, Xi proved too eager to mix his dreams of personal and national glory.

Not everything bad started with Xi, but he arrogantly assumed ownership of it all: Hong Kong, Xinjiang, the South China Sea, the Belt and Road Initiative and, most tellingly, leadership for life. He obviously thinks the world is more ready for his and China’s leadership than it is proving to be.

China is losing the world’s trust following its cover-up of Covid-19

When Xi and his party mismanaged the early days of the virus outbreak, he disappeared for weeks, letting the epidemic spread globally and evidently trying to protect himself.

Now, like Trump, Xi is trying too hard to divert attention from his early lapses by authorising a grotesque propaganda effort to portray China as a global source of medical help. That help is welcome, but the personality cult accompanying it is not. Look at the negative reactions in Europe and Africa.

Much of what lies before us is in the hands of science, industry and community leaders as they tackle the pandemic. We can only pray that the leaders will not further impede these efforts by pursuing selfish political objectives.

We should not expect that, in a time that calls for common efforts between these two leaders, they will look beyond their legitimate differences to meet their common challenges. In China, the party is marching in lockstep behind Xi and arresting those who voice doubts.

In the US, Congress members have submitted more than 260 pieces of legislation intended to distance the US from or punish China’s authorities. None are likely to pass, but they serve as an indicator of the political opportunity sensed in taking hawkish stands on China.

For the same reason, observers should not place high hopes on Trump’s challenger, Joe Biden, to pursue a more constructive course before the November election.

God forbid, failure to wrestle successfully with Covid-19 might cause a reconsideration of the stances now adopted by the two. More likely, the policy choices they have made will permit each to continue feeding off the other’s behaviour, attempting to attract nationalist domestic support at the expense of international cooperation.

Douglas H. Paal is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Post