Do it, because you have to, said President Xi to the WHO

Last week the boss of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ethiopian former minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, flew to China with a heavy mind. The coronavirus had made thousands of people sick and spread to other countries. Tedros had a difficult message for Chinese President Xi Jinping and feared his response. The message came down to this: declare your country a pariah of the world.

Tedros, a former malaria researcher who was elected Director-General by 196 WHO countries in 2017, had brought Mike Ryan. Ryan, an Irish WHO doctor, has been fighting pandemics such as SARS, bird flu and ebola for twenty years. He is now head of the Emergencies Program.

Also read: the latest developments regarding the corona virus outbreak

Tedros and Ryan stepped in to the Chinese president and expected them to have a battle with him, say those involved who want to remain anonymous. In previous pandemics, China long refused to quarantine epicenter of the outbreak and to share research results. They told Xi to declare the corona outbreak, which probably originated in a market with live beasts in Wuhan, as an “international emergency.”

China had to isolate the virus fire and share all available details with the WHO in Geneva. Borders would close. Flights would stop. Trade would stop. That required immense sacrifices from the state and from citizens. Tedros said that China, with good laboratories and hospitals, could possibly tackle the virus in its own country. But poor countries couldn’t do that. Now that the virus was spreading worldwide, you couldn’t let poor countries muddle up. New epicentres would arise everywhere. Only if the international emergency was declared could the WHO assist these countries and stop the virus. But that emergency situation only came if China agreed.

President Xi expected that message. He was well briefed and did not resist. Do it, he said, because you have to. He did ask if Tedros wanted to be kind to his country when announcing that state of emergency. That was all. Tedros afterwards praised Xi for his “rare leadership” in the interest of the whole world.

How deadly is the new corona virus and what does China do to prevent it from spreading? This is what you need to know about the new virus.

Geopolitically charged moment

Such a helpful China had never seen seasoned disease fighters at the WHO. Many outbreaks came from China in the last twenty years. At the first SARS outbreak in 2003, it took months before Beijing recognized the problem and the first WHO experts were allowed to enter the country. China defended its sovereignty with hand and tooth.

This hindered the WHO in its work. The organization is not allowed to enter a country without permission, although half the population falls dead. Because countries at the WHO decide everything, the organization hardly dares to criticize those struggling against fear of repercussions.

But times have changed, directly and indirectly tell those involved. The coronavirus hits China at a geopolitically charged moment. The country is embroiled in a murderous rivalry with the US for global dominance in all sorts of areas. Beijing sees everything through that prism: the Hong Kong uprising, European contracts for Huawei, wars in the Middle East and now the fight against the corona virus.

At the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, the American Center for Disease Control (CDC) took two months to identify the virus. In swine flu in Mexico and the US, in 2009, the Americans only produced test kits for identification after a month and a half. It took the Chinese exactly one week to isolate and identify the corona virus. They immediately made their genetic information available worldwide. While Americans have neglected and undermined the international system in recent years, China is now taking the lead. By agreeing to the international emergency, one concerned says, President Xi is taking “a calculated, geopolitical step.”

Xi takes back control

At the outbreak of the corona virus, Xi initially lacked direction. Drivers in Wuhan suppressed alarm signals from doctors in the first crucial weeks. Panic arose. It was buzzing with rumors. For a regime that cares for its citizens in exchange for political loyalty, something like this could result in a legitimacy crisis.

Also read: “Nobody does anything until Xi speaks”

Xi seizes the emergency situation to regain control of the situation. With him as general, the state runs the operation with military precision. The entire people have been mobilized. Volunteers stop cars to keep everyone cool, biotech companies race to produce test kits and vaccines. The party monopolizes all information channels to win this “people’s war against the new viral pneumonia.”

Flu fighters at the WHO are lyrical about this new China. After the 2003 SARS epidemic, which claimed 774 lives in Asia before it was under control, the WHO was blamed for not having given enough leadership. China barely cooperated. Other countries took measures at once to reassure citizens who, in retrospect, proved ineffective and caused unnecessary economic damage. In response to this SARS debacle, the WHO has set up one central system with global scenarios – from the way laboratory tests are conducted to criteria for alarms and communication with health ministries.

In 2004 the WHO built the so-called Shoc cream. For this “Strategic Health Operations Center” an old movie theater in the catacombs of the Geneva headquarters was transformed into a crisis center. All reports about infectious diseases arrive here on large screens. Everything is tracked – flu, Ebola, cholera outbreaks. For example, WHO staff communicate via satellite connections with external experts or regional teams.

Growing Chinese influence

How that works was demonstrated in 2006 when the bird flu virus emerged and the world, three years after SARS, fell under the spell of fear again. Even then, Mike Ryan was driving the Shoc room, in shirt sleeves, with a memory stick on a cord around his neck. He had calculated how many deaths a new pandemic could claim, how many hospital beds had to be ready and how many vaccines governments had to take. The death toll of the Spanish flu in 1918 was shown on screens on cow letters. It was a well-oiled PR campaign. Many said the WHO exaggerated in 2005/2006. But Ryan said they used to be too passive. “We are now active. We have to shake people up. “

Also read this report (from 2005): Assertive WHO wants to wake up the world.

In 2005, WHO member states also revised the International Health Regulations (IHR). These are rules that give the organization the power to manage governments in an emergency, and to give clear instructions to citizens, public transport and hospitals. The WHO also makes genetic information of a virus quickly known, so that pharmacists can make vaccines worldwide. At the time, American laboratories played the leading role in determining that genetic information. Back then, American labs were the best in the world. Now Chinese laboratories belong to that. In the context of the geopolitical ‘Total Information War’ with the US, the Asia Times, “The Chinese scientific response is breathtakingly fast.”

China is now the second donor to the WHO, after the US. Who pays, also decides on policy, important projects and appointments. China is becoming more powerful among all international organizations. When UN Secretary-General António Guterres needs twenty employees, China sends him fifty – paid for by Beijing. Last year, China used crude diplomatic guns to make a Chinese boss at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

This growing Chinese influence sometimes causes resentment, also at the WHO. According to Director General Tedros, everyone should just swallow that resentment. It takes at least six weeks for the WHO to know where the corona virus is going. Until then it is all hands on deck. For everyone. Tedros always emphasizes that this fight “without the personal commitment of President Xi” would have been lost in advance. He still sounds a bit embarrassed when he says it.

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