“In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history,” WHO experts said in their February report on the mission to China. WHO was keen to broadcast Beijing’s message. And after China reported only a few new cases each day, WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11-even though it had spread globally weeks before. 30, a public health emergency of international concern. 22 that there was any need to do so.Īfter the Beijing visit, though, WHO said in a statement that it appreciated “especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated.” Only after the meeting did it declared, on Jan. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors-unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body-and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Today, despite the falsehoods it initially passed on, which played a critical role in delaying global response, it’s trying to leverage its reputed success story into a stronger position on international health bodies. Already a serious strategic rival of the United States with considerable international clout, it’s now moving into a new field-health.Īfter initial denials and cover-ups, China successfully contained the COVID-19 outbreak-but not before it had exported many cases to the rest of the world. While the novel coronavirus is changing the world, China is trying to do the same.

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