Avenues for US-China health cooperation seen

The United States can learn from the "tremendous success" that China has had in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the head of a public health-focused NGO.

Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, said that China is doing a better job than the US in controlling the pandemic, and the US should acknowledge that.

"We have to really recognize both the tremendous success that China has done controlling COVID — it's remarkable — and we have to recognize that the US is dealing with a very fragmented polity, where, you know, there is a disagreement about everything from where the sun rises and sets to the gravity now in the US," he said.

Frieden spoke Thursday during the "US-China Health Security Cooperation: Time is of the Essence" webinar, hosted by the Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS).

Deborah Seligsohn, a senior associate with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS, expressed that "especially on public health infrastructure, we probably have as much to learn from China as China does from the United States". She said "it would be helpful to the overall relationship".

Xiaoqing Boynton, the senior director of the International Affairs Program at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, stressed that health security should be a shared priority between the US and China, along with working through multilateral mechanisms on health issues.

She said that on the pandemic there has been robust collaboration across borders in the commercial world. She noted that Eli Lilly and Co, a US-based multinational pharmaceutical company, has had a productive partnership with Chinese company Junshi to develop one of the antibodies that eventually led to an approved coronavirus therapy that has been used in the US and across the world.

Boynton said that despite geopolitical challenges, that type of collaboration needs to be leveraged and promoted in a better policy environment.

"I think it's a very positive example and shows what the two countries can do together," said Boynton.

She said she also hopes that commercial and technical collaboration continues while people wait for high-level engagement and strategy to restart.

"I hope that this kind of technical collaboration at a working level in the science and tech and commercial world can continue to serve the bridge to build trust," Boynton said.

Seligsohn made two suggestions for US-China health cooperation.

The first is "working together as equals".

"That's really tough for the US. Honestly, in every area, we tend to have these massive interagency meetings in Washington, then go to Beijing already with the plan and hand it over; that's just not the way you work with any equal and requires a real rethinking of how to work together," she said.

Secondly, Seligsohn suggested that the US and China work more closely with the World Health Organization (WHO).

"If we look back at the miracle of the improvements in influenza surveillance in China, it was a US-CDC-China CDC cooperation, but under a WHO umbrella," she said.

Seligsohn stressed that it is not right to blame the pandemic on China, as such an approach will hurt bilateral cooperation.

In reference to a range of bat-related diseases, she said "we need a much better animal surveillance system, and this is something where both the US and China have a joint interest".