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By Qin Zhou, JHBL Staff Member
“If an authoritarian government demonstrates competence in ensuring its citizens’ most basic human right—the right to life—as a democratic, decentralized government flounders, objections to the measures China has used to do so will sound to many like sour grapes.”[1]
—Graham Allison
This is our war. Not war between China and the United States, but together, against the coronavirus. Growing up, I was always fascinated with war and never stopped looking for a new diary, a new memoir, or a new movie on struggles between men. Now I understand how the world can change overnight and how quickly one must adapt to the world around him. War is the struggle between ideology and states, between values and morals, and between people. And this time, it is not human against human, but man against nature. In this war against the coronavirus, the United States and China must stand back-to-back and thrive together, just like the war we fought against Imperial Nazis seventy years ago. This blog discusses two questions, who should take responsibility and what method works.
The first question is who should take responsibility. The originality of the virus is still being debated; the theories that carried the most weight are bat soup or a leaked bioweapon. President Trump named the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus.” He said it was in China where the virus originated, it was China’s lack of action and containment that leaked the virus, and it should be China’s responsibility to pay for damages caused by the virus.[2]
This was an attempt to evade responsibilities for his own failures.[3] China does not control the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). China does not control the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or the Cable News Network. And China certainly does not control the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Central Intelligence Agency. The intelligence community is granted nearly unlimited accesses and resources by the President, to gather intelligence, by all means, from foreign countries to aid Americans. The media, in their roles to advocate for liberty and freedom, should propagate and convince the public what the truth is. The CDC is funded with public grants to save people, rescue them from diseases, and obsolete idiotic superstitions.
A good helmsman does not blame the storm. Pointing fingers at each other does not address the problem at hand. The United States government acted despite President Trump’s intention to duck responsibility with his claim of the “Chinese Virus.” Only two days after Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus on January 11, 2020, the National Institute of Health and Moderna’s infectious disease research team finished the sequencing of mRNA-1273, to be used in clinical manufacturing of the virus-targeting vaccine. On March 16, 2020, 63 days after genetic sequencing of the virus, the first human participants in the Phase 1 study were dosed with the test vaccine made from mRNA-1273.[4] By the end of March 2021, America has made 240 million doses of the vaccine, sufficient to fully inoculate 130 million people.[5]
The second question is, which methods work? Will liberty and freedom prevail in the war against the coronavirus, or will the authoritarian teachings succeed? The United States, as the fervent advocate of the former, has sought to persuade the world that rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are paramount. Across the Pacific, China adopted the ideology of “Socialism with Special Chinese Characteristics,” applying socialist-capitalist hybrid market theory while maintaining the one-party proletariat dictatorship. Both countries, in this novel war against the foreign virus, tapped into their ideology for power and guidance.
America’s early response to the virus was flawed but inevitable. When the virus hit, the governing party’s guiding political theory is small government and trade protectionism. This policy resulted in a lack of centralized and concerted actions against the virus in its early stage. Already plagued by the impeachment and attack on the legitimacy of the presidency, the executive branch failed to act, despite warnings from the Chinese CDC, the WHO, and American’s own intelligence community as early as January 3, 2020.[6] The initial negligence evolved into a nationwide circus. Two months later, during the first peak of coronavirus patient waves, fifty individual states of the United States would enter into open bidding to buy ventilators against each other, and against FEMA[7], the United States’ own federal equipment reserve.[8]
The United States made her first course correction on March 25, 2020 when President Trump activated emergency powers and allowed the federal government to deliver response funds and medical equipment to state and local governments. Five days prior, on March 20, 2020, the Office of the United States Trade Representatives lifted tariffs previously imposed on Chinese ventilators, oxygen masks, nebulizers and personal protective equipment under Section 301 Tariff Actions. Before March 20, 2020, United States buyers would have to pay 25% more for masks and hand sanitizer and 15% more for disposable gowns, goggles, and nitrile gloves.[9]
On November 4, 2020, a new government was voted into office for the United States. Back in the general elections of 2020, then Presidential candidate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris proposed a seven-point plan to fight coronavirus.[10] On March 25, 2021, three months after the inauguration, President Biden announced his goal of distributing 200 million vaccines within his first 100 days in office.[11] Following the liberal tradition, the United States issued her own course correction to attack the coronavirus through the democratic process and universal vaccination.
Across the Pacific, China used authoritarian methods such as centralized response, mandatory quarantine, and phone-based geo-positioning tracking. Despite Americans’ effort since 1908 to save and transform China into a democratic society in a missionary vigor, the centralized one-party government with a market economy proved itself to be more efficient against a pandemic.[12]
Wuhan, one of the four most important railway hubs in China, entered a full lockdown on Jan. 23, 2020.[13] In ten days, two hospitals designed for contagious diseases were constructed with 1,500 workers on triple shifts and 280 machines.[14] Across China, 14,000 checkpoints were established at public transportation hubs, and the country transitioned to emergency disease response mode. People who refused to wear a mask were cited and arrested, placed into mandatory quarantine, and a GPS-activated Alipay Health Code app that displays a health code (green is good, red is contagious) was required at the entrance of every public building and public transportation station.[15] Methods that were initially criticized by the West to be overly harsh and oppressive had contained the coronavirus by the end of May 2020. On March 26, 2021, the National Health Committee of the People’s Republic of China reported 161 existing infectious cases and 4,036 close contract cases under observation.[16] China also supplied the world with personal protective equipment and virus testing kits. On January 14, 2021, the state media Xinhua reported China had exported 224 billion masks, 1 billion testing kits, and a quarter-million ventilators in the year 2020.[17]
Chinese Communists have succeeded in economic reform, as well as withstanding the scrutiny of the people and challenges to the Party’s authority. The Chinese people have traded some liberty for secured jobs and their lives. By lifting the largest amount of people in the world out of poverty in forty years, the authoritarian government has granted its people “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.”[18] The draconian dictation of coronavirus quarantine across China has ensured the Chinese citizens the most basic human right, the right to life.[19]
It is time for China and America to stand together, to recognize that ideological struggle matters little when it comes to our lives and the lives of our children. This is not a war between two countries or two ideologies, but the fight for humanity.
Qin “Felix” Zhou is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School with a concentration in Trial and Appellate Advocacy. Nicknamed “Big Cat,” Felix enjoys cooking, skiing, and playing ocarina. Felix is a member of Suffolk Law National Trial Team and the Suffolk Law Diversity and Inclusion Committee, in addition to being a staff member on the Journal of Health and Biomedical Law.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHBL or Suffolk University Law School.
Sources:
[1] Graham Allison & Chris Li, In War Against Coronavirus: Is China Foe—or Friend?, Belfer Center for Sci. and Int’l Affairs (Mar. 27, 2020), https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/war-against-coronavirus-china-foe-or-friend.
[2] See Donald Moynihan & Gregory Porumbescu, Trump’s ‘Chinese virus’ slur makes some people blame Chinese Americans. But others blame Trump, Wash. Post (Sept 16, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/ 09/16/trumps-chinese-virus-slur-makes-some-people-blame-chinese-americans-others-blame-trump/.
[3] See Allison, supra note 1.
[4] See Moderna’s Work on our COVID-19 Vaccine, Moderna (last visited Mar. 28, 2021), https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19.
[5] Josh Wingrove, U.S. Shot Supply To Hit 240 Million Next Week, White House Says, Bloomberg (Mar. 26, 2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/pfizer-moderna-j-j-on-track-for-vaccine-targets-official-says
[6] Shane Harris et. al., U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic, Wash. Post (Mar.20, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html.
[7] The Federal Emergency Management Agency.
[8] David Smith, New York’s Andrew Cuomo decries ‘eBay’-style bidding war for ventilators, Guardian (Mar.31, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/new-york-andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-ventilators.
[9] See Office of the United States Trade Representative, China Section 301-Tariff Actions and Exclusion Process, https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/enforcement/section-301-investigations/tariff-actions. See also Deborah Kaplan, How tariffs ravaged the COVID-19 medical supply chain, Supplychain Dive (Mar. 27, 2020), https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/coronavirus-tariffs-trade-medical-supply-chain/578615/.
[10] Joe Biden, https://joebiden.com/covid19/.
[11] Dan Mangan & Berkeley Lovelace Jr, Biden sets new Covid vaccine goal of 200 million shots within his first 100 days: ‘I believe we can do it’, CNBC (Mar.25, 2021), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/25/biden-will-announce-new-covid-vaccine-goal-200-million-shots-within-his-first-100-days.html.
[12] In 1908, Boxer Indemnity’s 17 million dollars created the scholarship to educate the Chinese as a chance for “American-directed reform” in China. From 1937 to 1945, U.S. volunteer fighter pilots formed the “Flying Tigers” to repel Japanese aggression on the mainland. In 1950, U.S China relationship sunk to the lowest point after the Nationalist government was exiled to Taiwan and Communist China, the People’s Republic of China entered in direct military conflict with the United States. See Weili Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name:Chinese Students in the United States, 1900–1927 (2001). President Nixon, in his visit to China in 1972, along with Henry Kissinger, began the engagement with China. The purpose was to divide China from the Soviet bloc and to prompt social change stemmed from economic reform. See William Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts, The New Press (1999). In 2000, President Clinton became the major proponent for China to join the World Trade Organization. American statesman hope that the middle-class generated by the economic reform will be the proponents of social change, and this policy of engagement was applauded as a rare bipartisan success in U.S. foreign policy. See United States–China Relations Act of 2000, H.R. 4444, 106th Cong. (1999).
[13] See Zheming Yuan et. al., Modelling the effects of Wuhan’s lockdown during COVID-19, China, Bulletin of the World Health Organization [WHO] (28 May 2020), https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/98/7/20-254045/en/.
[14] See Talha Burki, China’s successful control of COVID-19, The Lancet (Nov.1, 2020) https://www.thelancet.com /journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext.
[15] See Paul Mozur et.al., In Coronavirus Fight, China Gives Citizens a Color Code, With Red Flags, N.Y. Times (Jan. 28, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html
[16] Health Emergency Office, The latest situation of the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic as of 24:00 on March 26, National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China (Mar. 27, 2021), http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/yqtb/202103/a6b6a2093a7047dd8be19d40739a402d.shtml.
[17] The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, Regular press conference of the Ministry of Commerce on January 14, http://www.scio.gov.cn/xwfbh/gbwxwfbh/xwfbh/swb/Document/1697104/ 1697104.htm.
[18] G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, Art.15, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948).
[19] Allison, supra note 1.