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Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses global
leaders Monday at a virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly.
(World Health Organization/AFP/Getty Images)
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Chinese President Xi Jinping took center stage Monday. Over
a video feed, he
delivered the opening speech at an annual meeting held by
the World Health
Organization, casting his nation as an exemplar of
“transparency” during the
pandemic and a champion of the developing
world. Xi announced a $2 billion
commitment to the international
fight against the novel coronavirus, including
funding to help
reinforce health infrastructure in Africa.
That move drew an immediate contrast to President Trump, whose
administration
has frozen funding to the WHO amid its ongoing
squabbles with the U.N. agency
over its initial handling of the
outbreak and supposed acquiescence to China.
Xi had other reasons to pat himself on the back. Ahead of the
meeting, there
were mounting calls from various countries, including
the United States, for an investigation into the origins of the
outbreak, centered on the Chinese city of
Wuhan. But as global
support for an inquiry grew, its focus shifted in Xi’s favor.
“Drafts
of the proposed resolution showed a focus on international
collaboration
to manage the pandemic, with relatively limited
emphasis on questioning
its source,
” my colleagues Gerry Shih, Emily Rauhala and Josh Dawsey reported.
The Chinese president placed himself at the forefront of global
efforts to produce
a vaccine, extolled the necessity of
“information-sharing” and the virtues of
“openness,” and sidestepped
the many grievances over China’s conduct
during the pandemic.
Then, there was Taiwan. Ahead of the meeting, the United
States and 28
other countries called for Taiwan to be admitted to the meeting
as an observer,
given its success in recognizing the coronavirus
threat early and warding it off
at home. Beijing, though, views the
island as a part of China and has spent
decades trying to make its
government an international pariah. Ultimately, the
WHO did not
extend an invitation to Taiwan, which withdrew its bid for observer
status.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the occasion to castigate WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, who critics say has been too conciliatory to
Beijing. “The Director-General’s lack of independence deprives the
Assembly of Taiwan’s renowned scientific expertise on pandemic
disease, and further damages the WHO’s credibility and effectiveness
at a time when the world needs it the most,” Pompeo said in a
statement.
He has hinted at the prospect of the United States forging an alternate body
to supplant the WHO.
But for now, the Trump administration’s histrionics
have seen its
influence in multilateral organizations wane — not least in the
failed standoff over Taiwan’s observer status.
But even if it’s not present in this week’s major meetings,
Taiwan is having
a global moment. Its deft management of the crisis — with only seven
reported coronavirus-related deaths — was a mark of efficient,
transparent governance and
a society with recent experience handling
deadly outbreaks. Like China, Taiwan
launched its own soft-power
initiative to send medical aid and relief around the
world, efforts
that won widespread plaudits, especially in countries where public
attitudes are souring on Beijing.
“Taiwan has provided supplies and health assistance not only to
friendly states, but also to countries in Asia, Africa and South
America that have close ties with China
,” my colleagues reported. “It has routed face-mask
donations to China-friendly
African countries through the Vatican,
one of Taipei’s few diplomatic allies, and
held an online medical
seminar with doctors from countries that have recently
switched ties
from Taipei to Beijing, including the Dominican Republic and
El
Salvador. A recent Twitter campaign for Taiwan’s participation in the
assembly
gained
a push from Twitter users in India, Thailand and Hong Kong.”
“The 23 million people of Taiwan want greater international
participation,
and the government will take full advantage of the
growing momentum in
world support to get it,” Jaushieh Joseph Wu,
Taiwan’s foreign affairs minister,
said in a statement Monday.
Despite not being officially recognized by the United States,
Taiwan has also
stepped up cooperation with Washington, including a
flurry of Cabinet-level
meetings.
“In a way this relationship makes a
lot of sense,” Matthew Kroenig, deputy
director
of the Atlantic
Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said during a
webinar on Monday. “Taiwan does have shared interests. It’s an
example of a
successful, open-market democracy in Asia.”
There’s a limit to what this soft power can achieve. Unable
to compete
with China’s economic and political clout, Taiwan has seen
its already small
list of diplomatic backers diminish. Like its
predecessors, the Trump administration maintains the delicate status
quo of not officially recognizing Taiwan’s de facto
sovereignty,
while warning against any potential unilateral Chinese efforts to
reclaim the island.
Rising anti-Taiwan jingoism in China has also been
accompanied by more
aggressive military posturing, with Beijing
sailing a battle group, including
an aircraft carrier, twice around the island in April. In Taiwan,
meanwhile,
attitudes toward China are hardening. A number of recent
polls have found that considerable majorities of Taiwanese view the United States more favorably
than China
and see their national identity as “Taiwanese” — not “Chinese,”
as
would be hoped for adherents of the one-China policy.
That’s troubling for Xi, who earlier in his tenure staked a degree of his political
legitimacy on
plans to “reunite” the island with the mainland. With many of
China’s
neighbors growing increasingly wary of Beijing, and a liberal,
pro-independence government firmly in command in Taipei, Xi’s vision of
peaceful reunification looks all the more improbable. |
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Talking Points
• Trump did
more Monday night to widen the gap between
the World Health
Organization and the United States. In a
letter to
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
Trump threatened to
permanently pull funding from the U.N. body.
“It is clear the
repeated missteps by you and your organization in
responding to the
pandemic have been extremely costly for the world.
The only way
forward for the World Health Organization is if it can
actually
demonstrate independence from China,” Trump wrote. The United States
is the organization’s largest donor, and some experts warn pulling
WHO funding
during a pandemic could have disastrous effects.
• Hundreds of
coronavirus outbreaks have blazed through
Canada’s long-term care
facilities. Nursing homes account for 81
percent
of the country’s covid-19 deaths, according to Theresa Tam, Canada’s
chief public health officer, a far greater proportion than in the
United States.
The Post’s Amanda Coletta digs
into the factors that have made the homes so at
risk.
• Nearly five
years after the brutal killing of a Palestinian family
in the West
Bank village of Duma, an Israeli court on Monday
convicted a Jewish extremist on
three counts of murder and
two counts of
attempted murder but stopped short of finding the perpetrator
guilty
of membership in a terrorist organization.
• The odds of
major hurricanes around the world are increasing
because of human-caused global warming. That’s according to a new
study
reported on by my colleagues whose findings are
consistent
with what scientists expect to happen as the world warms.
“With powerful
hurricanes on the increase, one can expect damage
costs, in dollar terms and
in potential loss of life, to skyrocket,”
they write. |
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Top of The Post
By
Brittany Shammas, Katie Mettler, Kim Bellware, John Wagner, Adam
Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Steven Goff, Kareem Copeland and Felicia
Sonmez ● Read
more »
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Viewpoints
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By Evelyn N. Farkas | The Washington Post ● Read more »
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By Vincent Bevins | The New York Review of
Books ● Read more »
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Rebel with a pause
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A destroyed hangar at al-Watiya air base, south of
the capital, Tripoli, after the strategic location was seized by
forces loyal to Libya's U.N.-recognized government. (Mahmud
Turkia/AFP/Getty Images)
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Forces aligned with Libya's U.N.-installed government seized
control of a key western military base from eastern-based commander
Khalifa Hifter on Monday, delivering a major blow to his more
than a year-long effort to oust the government. The capture of al-Watiya air
base, roughly 80 miles south of the capital, Tripoli, was
acknowledged by loyalists from both sides, and
footage posted on social media showed fighters from the Tripoli
government roaming around the base, on runways and in hangars.
“The base has been a strategic asset for [Hifter] for over half a
decade,” Emadeddin Badi, a Libya expert and nonresident senior fellow
at the Atlantic Council, said on Twitter. “Though its capture is by
& large symbolic militarily, strategically & morale-wise, it
is significant.”
Hifter, a dual U.S.-Libyan citizen and former CIA asset who lived
for years in Northern Virginia, launched
his Tripoli offensive in April 2019, vowing to seize the
capital quickly. Instead,
the campaign has turned into a military stalemate, with forces bogged
down in fighting that has killed and wounded several thousand
civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The violence is the worst since Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring
revolution and NATO involvement led to the toppling and death of
dictator Moammar Gaddafi. In the years since, the country has been
led by rival administrations — the U.N.-backed one in Tripoli and an
eastern-based one. Outside
powers, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates,
have fueled the fighting by backing one side against the other with
heavy weaponry, mercenaries, military trainers and
intelligence in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.
Analysts said that although the Tripoli government is likely to
push forward to extract more gains against Hifter, the commander’s
air power remains significant. He still has an air base in eastern
Libya. — Sudarsan Raghavan
Read on: U.N.-backed Libyan government
seizes key air base, dealing blow to renegade commander |
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1,000 Words
Kafil Ahmed is a front-line caregiver whose duties begin when
nurses and doctors can do no more. He runs Al-Birr Islamic Trust
Funeral Service out of the back of the Greenwich Islamic Center, a
prominent mosque in southeast London. Even as someone accustomed to
seeing death up close, he has witnessed things during the novel coronavirus
outbreak that he never could have imagined.
Traditionally, a body is washed; wrapped in simple linens; prayed
over; and buried quickly, usually within a day. They no longer wash
the dead. Instead, they sprinkle clean sand over the body bag and
drape a shroud over it before placing the deceased in a coffin. Only
five family members are allowed at the gravesite, standing six feet
apart. (Gus Palmer/For The Washington Post) |
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Afterword
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