China and the US may not be seeing eye-to-eye following the weekend's diplomatic faux pas, but the countries still have a mutual interest in working together to fight coronavirus, a political commentator says.
A prominent Chinese diplomat, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, tweeted a video of Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield address a US Congressional committee on March 11.
Redfield said in the address that some influenza deaths in the US had later been identified as Covid-19 cases, but did not say when those people had died or over what time period.
Zhao pointed to Redfield's remarks in support of a conspiracy theory also circulated through state propaganda channels which claims the coronavirus did not originate in Hubei province.
"CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!," Zhao wrote.
The tweet came as parts of the Chinese social media sphere appeared to amplify the theory that the novel coronavirus may not have began in Wuhan - members of the US military were in Wuhan for the World Military Games in October last year.
Regardless of where the virus originated, both super powers are now feeling its effects on their economies.
Speaking this morning to Breakfast, Otago University international relations Professor Robert Patman said while the accusations are flying, both countries also have a vested interest to do whatever is possible to work together to contain the virus.
"I don't think it's too serious - I think both governments are feeling under pressure because of the coronavirus development," Prof Patman said.
"Xi Jinping's government was quite slow - the first known coronavirus outbreak occurred in China on the 20th of November, and China didn't concede that they had a problem until the 20th of December a month later.
"On Mr Trump's part, he's feeling a little bit defensive over the coronavirus as well because he spent the first two months of this year denying there was a problem, before belatedly announcing a state of emergency this week.
"So I think both of them are finger pointing as a bit of a deflection tactic - but they are both facing this problem - both of them have a vested interest in getting on top of this problem as quickly as possible.
"Both countries which have been involved in a trade war [but] it seems that their hard-won trade war truce, which was achieved in January of this year, is now in danger by the economic fallout from the coronavirus problem - and it's huge.
"China took severe containment measures at home but that meant that a lot of Chinese people were not working, and that is already affecting their exports and, to some degree, their imports.
"The United States' economy is also severely disrupted at the moment, it's likely to be more disrupted in the near future, so yes, what we're witnessing here is a big incentive for countries to cooperate as much as they can in order to get over this hump and to get their economies going again - at the moment we seem to be facing a global recession."
Even before the European travel ban, the Dow Jones fell past a threshold that often accompanies a recession while the NZX ended the day x per cent down.
Prof Patman said Donald Trump has been put on the back foot by the spread of the new coronavirus, going from a message of strength to scrambling to contain it, and it could possibly affect this year's US election result.
"Commentators sometimes refer to 'black swan' events - events that come out of the blue," Mr Patman said.
"We often think about politics in terms of agendas and things that they say they're going to do, but often careers are made - or unmade - on things that no one anticipates and the coronavirus has this potential for Mr Trump.
"At the beginning of the year, his economy was growing at four per cent per year, and he was able to boast that everything was going fine.
"I think that he was quite confident about being re-elected.
"But the fallout from this problem - already 80 per cent of the gains that were achieved on the stock market in the United States under Mr Trump have been wiped out within a week and that pattern could continue.
"So yes, he's got to try to stage a bit of a political recovery now, with facing election in November."
The same applies for Xi Jinping, Mr Patman said, but in a different way.
"As for the Chinese leadership, no elections there - but you can bet your bottom dollar there are some ambitious people in the ruling political party that think they might be able to do a better job of running China than Xi Jinping," Mr Patman said.
"And he will not be indifferent to other people's political aspirations."
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