Health security seen as way to build bridges

The United States can learn from the "tremendous success" that China has had in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the head of a public health-focused organization.

Tom Frieden, president and chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, said that China is doing a better job than the US in controlling the pandemic, and the US should acknowledge that.

"We have to really recognize both the tremendous success that China has done controlling COVID－it's remarkable－and we have to recognize that the US is dealing with a very fragmented polity, where, you know, there is a disagreement about everything from where the sun rises and sets to the gravity now in the US," he said.

Frieden was speaking on Dec 16 at a seminar titled US-China Health Security Cooperation: Time is of the Essence. The event was hosted by the Center for Strategy and International Studies.

Deborah Seligsohn, a senior associate with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the center, expressed the view that "especially on public health infrastructure, we probably have as much to learn from China as China does from the United States". She added: "It would be helpful to the overall relationship."

Xiaoqing Boynton, the senior director of the International Affairs Program at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, told the forum that health security should be a shared priority of the US and China, along with working through multilateral mechanisms on health issues.

She said there has been robust collaboration across borders in the commercial world in the response to the pandemic. She notes that Eli Lilly and Co, a US-based multinational pharmaceutical company, has had a productive partnership with Chinese company Junshi to develop one of the antibodies that eventually led to an approved coronavirus therapy now used in the US and across the world.

Boynton said that despite the geopolitical challenges facing the bilateral relationship, that type of collaboration needs to be leveraged and promoted in a better policy environment.

"I think it's a very positive example and shows what the two countries can do together," Boynton said.

She said she also hopes that commercial and technical collaboration continues while people wait for high-level engagement to restart.

"I hope that this kind of technical collaboration at a working level in the science and tech and commercial world can continue to serve the bridge to build trust," Boynton said.

Greater role

Seligsohn made two suggestions for fostering greater US-China health cooperation.

The first is "working together" as equals. "That's really tough for the US. Honestly, in every area, we tend to have these massive interagency meetings in Washington, then go to Beijing already with the plan and hand it over," she said. "That's just not the way you work with any equal and requires a real rethinking of how to work together."

Second, Seligsohn suggests that the US and China work more closely with the World Health Organization.

She said that it is not right to blame the pandemic on China, as such an approach will hurt bilateral cooperation.

In reference to a range of bat-related diseases, she said: "We need a much better animal surveillance system, and this is something in which both the US and China have a joint interest."

Frieden held up as an example of cooperation on health the joint efforts by the US and the then Soviet Union to eradicate smallpox.

In a similar vein, there was the collaboration on the Ebola virus between the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.

Frieden said that China is interested in doing more in global health. So, for the US, cooperation with China on health issues could be a bridge to an era of peace by forging a type of detente with China. "I'm optimistic that's possible," he said.