China Needs Bigger Government
Brad W. Setser
Foreign Affairs, March 25

“China has failed to tax its rich effectively, and as a result, it has been unable to fund a progressive system of social insurance. This reality shapes the way the country interacts with the global economy, and it is an underlying cause of much of the trade tension between China and the United States.”

Home Delivery Has Helped China Through its Coronavirus Crisis. The US Needs to Catch Up
Hillary George-Parkin
VOX, March 25

“China’s massive e-commerce infrastructure is built for fast fulfillment: While before the coronavirus crisis, Amazon was investing billions to carve its delivery promise for Prime members down from two days to one (a countdown that doesn’t start until the package has left the warehouse), Chinese rival JD.com boasts that 90 percent of its orders are delivered within 24 hours.”

“This is becoming especially apparent as the outbreak worsens in North America and more and more people each day are told to avoid crowds and stay home. The surge in demand for food and household supplies has led to lines out the door at Costco, empty grocery-store shelves, and a seemingly endless run on toilet paper — and now, it’s pushing even our biggest online fulfillment networks well beyond capacity.”

“Chinese delivery giants weren’t immune to logistics issues during the outbreak … But the companies also had advantages their American rivals lack. First, most Chinese consumers were already doing much of their shopping via apps: The country’s online retail market was worth nearly $2 trillion in 2019, according to eMarketer, accounting for 35.3 percent of total retail sales — far higher than any other country in the world. The country’s leading e-commerce and food delivery apps have also invested heavily in warehouse automation, delivery drones, and unmanned delivery robots — moves that, while perhaps intended to reduce long-term costs, also make the companies less vulnerable to potential labor shortages.”

“Whether American retail giants can demonstrate this kind of flexibility remains to be seen, particularly given their reliance on huge, centralized warehouses — where upward of 1,500 people may work alongside one another — rather than a distributed network of stores and smaller fulfillment hubs.”

Yes, Blame China for the Virus
Paul D. Miller
Foreign Policy, March 25

“A global pandemic does not happen every time a novel infectious pathogen emerges. It happens when there is an absence of accurate information about the pathogen and a failure of basic public services—in this case, the failure to regulate food and marketplaces to prevent the transmission of pathogens, and the failure to shut down transportation and control movement once it spreads. When authorities regulate public health, share information about a pathogen, and cooperate to control its movement, diseases are contained and pandemics are unlikely.”

Trump Repeatedly Praised China’s Response to Coronavirus in February
Nathan McDermott and Andrew Kaczynsky
CNN, March 25

“President Donald Trump has in recent days criticized how China handled the coronavirus outbreak, saying Thursday that the ‘world is paying a very big price for what they did.’ But as the virus spread rapidly across China in the month of February, Trump repeatedly praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s response to the crisis, saying he’s handled it ‘really well’ and that he was doing ‘a very good job with a very, very tough situation.’”

“A CNN KFile review of Trump’s public statements identified at least 12 occasions in which the President praised or projected confidence about China’s response to coronavirus. This shift in tone from Trump represents a broader change in the President’s view of China, as he attempts to deflect responsibility for the ongoing global pandemic to Beijing’s initial handling of the crisis. It also shows how the President sought to downplay the threat of the virus in the weeks before the uptick of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US.”

U.S.-China Cooperation on Coronavirus Hampered by Propaganda War
Paul Haenle and Lucas Tcheyan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 24

“As Washington and Beijing wage war against the new coronavirus, they are also fighting a public relations battle against each other – one that could expand into a broader conflict that would serve neither country’s interests.”

“The opening salvos were fired in early January 2020, as the virus’s spread became apparent. Beijing criticized Washington for implementing restrictive travel bans, calling it an ‘overreaction.’ Washington rightly censured Beijing for covering up the virus’s initial spread and not being transparent with the world, but also used careless language to say the outbreak could be an opportunity for U.S. businesses.”

“… Developments since then, unfortunately, have proven this true. Furthermore, it appears the situation is worsening, as both China and the United States have used the crisis to deliberately inflict damage on the other … Instead of squabbling over the name of the virus, the administration should focus its efforts on promoting practical areas of cooperation with Beijing, beginning at this week’s virtual conference of G20 leaders. One valuable starting point would be vaccination efforts and information sharing among officials and medical personnel. The recently announced partnership by German company BioNTech, U.S. company Pfizer, and Chinese company Shanghai Fosun to develop and distribute a vaccine offers a good example of what’s needed. Moreover, cooperation between the private sector and national governments—at a time when the executive branch is unlikely to take the lead on such efforts—can help restore trust in the broader relationship.”

U.S.-China Relations and COVID-19: What Can Be Done Now
John L. Holden
Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 20

“The United States and China have dealt with a number of crises over the past decades. In each case, leaders of the two nations were able to shelve domestic political exigencies to find common ground upon which to base their nations’ futures. But today we seem to have entered unchartered waters, as the COVID-19 pandemic both highlights the need for Sino-American cooperation and, at the same time, reveals the two countries’ inability to do so.”

“… In recent days, we have witnessed extraordinarily unfortunate comments by representatives of both the Chinese and American governments. There are many reasons for this, among which is the relentless deterioration of Sino-American relations in the past several years, but one of the most important reasons is surely the anxiety that has gripped people around the world faced with the unprecedented wildfire spread of a disease that threatens lives and economic well-being. Ordinary people are on edge, and so are political leaders, their legitimacy threatened by public scrutiny of their management of a crisis none of them were prepared for.”

“In the short term, I am pessimistic about U.S.-China relations because I think that the leaders of both countries calculate that the benefits of blaming the other play so much to their own political advantage that they may be willing to sacrifice even potentially greater advantages that would accrue to their countries as a whole from cooperation. That does not mean, however, that improvements in Sino-American relations have no upside, nor does it mean that nothing positive can be done. To the contrary, now is the time when private and subnational actors must step up to seize opportunities for cooperation to defeat COVID-19, save lives, and limit economic hardship.”

The Changing Geopolitics of Nuclear Energy: A Look at the United States, Russia and China
Jane Nakano
Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 12

“The nuclear industry of advanced industrialized countries is under significant pressure to remain competitive as the market landscape for new nuclear power opportunities changes. The relative decline of U.S. nuclear export competitiveness comes at a time when Russia is boosting its dominance in new nuclear sales, and China is doubling down on its effort to become a leader in global nuclear commerce. This report illuminates how the changing market competition among the United States, Russia, and China will affect their future relations with nuclear commerce recipient countries, and discusses why Russia and China promote nuclear commerce, as well as which factors may alter their market competitiveness.”

“The Key Findings:

• Nuclear power generation projects have never been a purely commercial endeavor in the United States, and civilian nuclear export is difficult to be viable as a purely commercial undertaking.
• Global nuclear market dominance by state-led capitalist economies with limited accountability and governance capacities would endanger the future of global nuclear safety and nonproliferation.
• The U.S. retreat could bifurcate the use of nuclear power generation along with similar political or economic systems.
• Nuclear commerce is geopolitical in nature and creates multi-decadal ties between supplier and recipient countries, but nuclear commerce may not be an effective tool of foreign policy leverage.”

Why the Coronavirus Could Threaten the U.S. Economy More Than China’s
Austan Goolsbee
The New York Times, March 6

“After a string of deaths, some heart-stopping plunges in the stock market and an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve, there is reason to be concerned about the ultimate economic impact of the coronavirus in the United States.”