At Harvard forum, a call for sensible US-China relations amid pandemic

Four top "China hands" in the US recently expounded on the American response to the COVID-19 crisis as they called for collaboration with China to work toward an end to the pandemic.

The contrast between how the novel coronavirus crisis has been handled in China and the US is not one of ideologies "but between capacity, leadership and citizen trust in government", said Chas W. Freeman, chief interpreter for Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

Freeman was one of the participants in the online Harvard China Forum on May 7.

He said that the failings of politics and policies, together with populism, "which disrespects expertise and corrodes the confidence of the government", partly explain America's response to the pandemic.

"Americans prefer to spend tax dollars on efforts in engineering foreign-regime change rather than to build and sustain domestic human and physical infrastructure," Freeman said. He said that results in "serious US incapacity to respond to crises like the coronavirus pandemic".

William Kirby, chairman of the Harvard China Fund, said "the US lost six weeks of preparation" while China locked down, adding that "neither country comes out looking extraordinarily well".

"The Trump administration has decided to deflect the attention from its bungling of the coronavirus by blaming China," said Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Ezra Vogel, former director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, said that despite much negative media coverage in the US on China, "we're getting more ... masks and other equipment coming in from China right now to help us deal with the coronavirus. We're getting a lot of equipment, and a lot of little groups in China are making efforts to send their American friends equipment."

The panelists expressed concern that a lack of collaboration with China could worsen the pandemic in the US.

"It seems to me that we have already paid an enormous cost for the belief that scientific cooperation with China is inappropriate in the world of strategic competition," said Orlins, who believes the situation restricted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's communication and collaboration with China and "paved the way for this pandemic in the US".

Freeman said that the decoupling "came from a very small group of people, associated with the administration. The American public was very positive about the relationship with China despite the differences between their societies."

If the China-US relationship sours, "it is bad news globally, not just for our two countries", said Kirby.

Freeman said that Americans and Chinese need to "set aside the ideological differences to be able to tackle the challenges before us", and the only way to meet those challenges "is subduing our emotions and focusing on our respective national interests".

"Those interests require us to cooperate despite our differences. This cannot occur unless we rediscover the merits of mutually respectful dialogue, seeking truth from facts and avoiding pointless confrontation," he said.

Freeman said that it is necessary that Americans understand that collaborating with China is not a one-way street.

"It's not the US giving things to China. We both gain, and China has things to give to the United States, in science and technology. And we need to find some specific examples and bring home to people what the benefits of our solid relationship are," he said.

"We'll only get to the promised land if each and every one of you fights to strengthen the US-China relationship, fights to combat the lies, distortions and untruths, fights to make sure we stay on the right path," said Orlins.

He also said that Chinese and American students who have benefited from the bilateral relationship endeavor to make it productive again.

Vogel said that Americans "who have a reasonable point of view about the future of our country have a responsibility ... to reach out, to slow down the crazy insisting of some of the politicians who are just trying to raise their own situations".

"It's leading to disaster for both countries. We really need to cooperate," he said.

Yi Zong in Washington contributed to this story.