Page 94 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

China as a winner

The argument of those who claim that the pandemic crisis has

benefited China while exposing the weaknesses of the US is
threefold.

1. It has made the American strength as the world’s most
prominent military power irrelevant in the face of an
invisible and microscopic enemy.
2. In the words of the American academic who coined the

expression, it hurt the US soft power because of “the
incompetence of its response”. [95] (An important caveat:
the issue of whether a public response to COVID-19 was

“competent” or “incompetent” has given rise to a myriad
of opinions and provoked much disagreement. Yet, it
remains difficult to pass judgement. In the US, for
example, the policy response was to a large extent the

responsibility of states and even cities. Hence, in effect,
there was no national US policy response as such. What
we are discussing here are subjective opinions that
shaped public attitudes.)

3. It has exposed aspects of American society that some
may find shocking, like the deep inequalities in the face
of the outbreak, the lack of universal medical coverage
and the issue of systemic racism raised by the Black

Lives Matter movement.

All these prompted Kishore Mahbubani, an influential analyst
of the rivalry that opposes the US and China, [96] to argue that
COVID-19 has reversed the roles of both countries in terms of

dealing with disasters and supporting others. While in the past the
US was always the first to arrive with aid where assistance was
needed (like on 26 December 2004 when a major tsunami hit
Indonesia), this role now belongs to China, he says. In March

2020, China sent to Italy 31 tons of medical equipment
(ventilators, masks and protective suits) that the EU could not
provide. In his opinion, the 6 billion people who compose “the rest
of the world” and live in 191 countries have already begun

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