American and Chinese officials are engaged in an ideological “battle” occasioned by the novel coronavirus pandemic that could shape global perceptions of free societies and authoritarian regimes, according to U.S. officials.
“There is a real question that I don’t think has been resolved yet about which one of the multiple competing narratives prevails here,” a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly told the Washington Examiner. “Does this advance distrust? Or does it advance trust towards China and its system? That battle is really to be determined. And, I think that’s a battle that’s in the works right now.”
CIA officials have warned in recent years that the Chinese Communist Party is waging “a cold war” against the United States, but Western analysts traditionally have maintained that Beijing doesn’t share the late Soviet Union’s ambition to spread communism. Yet China is trying to “make the world safe for their own brand of authoritarianism” at the expense of democratic systems, according to senior U.S. diplomats, and the pandemic has brought that ideological rivalry to the center of the diplomatic arena.
“Over the course of the crisis we’ve monitored a couple of narrative tracks,” Special Envoy Lea Gabrielle, the State Department’s top counter-propaganda official, told reporters Friday. “One is malign disinformation to falsely blame the U.S. as the origin of the coronavirus, and the second has been China’s effort to turn the crisis into a news story highlighting supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party in handling the health crisis.”
Gabriel’s team has observed an abundance of that messaging from China targeted at developing nations in Africa, as well as the Western Hemisphere, but the debate has been joined at the highest levels of diplomacy. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told an assembly of Western diplomats and military officials in Munich that China’s tactics in locking down Hubei province “reflect the advantage of China’s system.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has emphasized that the outbreak originated in Wuhan city and enveloped the province because communist officials censored the early warnings.
“It’s important to not only respond effectively to the crisis, but it’s also important to win the narrative that’s associated with the crisis,” the senior U.S. official said.
Pompeo also has emphasized the costs of partnering too closely with China. “Many nations had their outbreak begin with transit from China,” Pompeo said Thursday. “There were countries that wanted to close their doors to Chinese travel, to the Chinese, and the Chinese government pushed back against them, asking them to keep their airports open in an effort to protect China from the stigma that might be attached with having transportation closed down.”
Yet Chinese officials insist that they have been “transparent and responsible in sharing information.” Their control of the factories that produce much of the world’s medical supplies has enabled them to send equipment to their partners despite international shortages. Some of those supplies have proven defective, but many analysts worry that China can capitalize on this crisis while the U.S. grapples with its own outbreak. Chinese Communist propagandists received a lift from reports last week that the U.S. has more confirmed coronavirus cases than China, despite the widespread consensus that Beijing is under-reporting the extent of their outbreak.
“There’s the propaganda over the virus itself where the Chinese are going to say, ‘we checked the virus and y’all are flailing,’ and until we check the virus itself, that is an open question: who handled it better?” American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Derek Scissors told the Washington Examiner.
President Trump’s high-profile decision to downplay the virus at a time when the U.S. lacked the testing kits needed to detect the outbreak has also been seized upon by Chinese officials, but some analysts will argue that error speaks to the need for a limited government system with a free press.
“The fact of the matter is, we’re less vulnerable to government breaking down when we have strong federalism, and it’s something that China doesn’t have,” said Michael Rubin, another AEI analyst. He credited state governors with leading the initial U.S. response. “People who are criticizing Donald Trump, they’re not disappearing in the middle of the night.”
American officials likely will highlight the human rights abuses that Chinese officials authorized in their belated effort to contain the outbreak.
“To use a Nazi Germany reference, sometimes there are things more important than having the trains run on time,” the senior U.S. official said. “Those effective authoritarian responses sometimes look good but aren’t always as good as they seem, and I think we need to emphasize that.”
