Opinion | How coronavirus scientists offer a formula for better US-China relations

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the United States needs to be engaged in “a race to the top, not a race to the bottom” with China. This reflects his view that competition with China should be the defining feature of the bilateral relationship, but also implies that Washington should seek cooperation with Beijing where national interests overlap.

Among the issues that are likely to be discussed at this week’s meeting between Blinken, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and their Chinese counterparts Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi in Anchorage, Alaska, is the importance of combating Covid-19. They will surely consider how their countries can join forces to stop the pandemic and develop protocols for a global response. 

Luckily, medical experts and scientists in both countries have communicated extensively throughout the Covid-19 crisis. Their cooperation – and healthy professional competition – is testimony to the “race to the top”. It is remarkable given the blame game both countries engaged in during the first year of the pandemic. 

As early as spring 2020, over 70 public health experts from both countries wrote an open letter in The New York Times, calling on policymakers in Washington and Beijing to jointly fight Covid-19 instead of “recklessly politicising this pandemic” and spreading “conspiracy theories or insulting language about virological origins”.

Epidemiologists and other medical experts in both the US and China worked closely together, soon after the outbreak in Wuhan. Walter Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University’s Centre for Infection and Immunity, visited Beijing and Guangzhou in late January 2020, and worked with Zhong Nanshan, head of the expert group of the National Health Commission.