ABSTRACT
This essay discusses setbacks to societal level of interactions between the United States and China resulting from the Trump administration's turn to comprehensive confrontation. Bilateral cooperation in areas like public health, technology trade and development, law enforcement, and trade in food and energy has been severely curtailed. Future efforts to repair damage to bilateral relations will have to begin with these and related areas that indisputably have a direct impact on individual welfare in the two societies.
ABSTRACT
China is a key player, not just an actor, in the global search for health security. Reiteration of this point is useful for International Relations studies, which often portray China as a factor to contend with, especially given the background of the country as the first to report the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper adopts an analytical framework developed through a summary of routines in Chinese engagement in global health from a practitioner’s perspective: aid, interdependence, governance and knowledge. These are the core elements in a country’s pursuit of engagement with the rest of the world. After the introduction, the second section of the paper reviews contributions from China in the history of global plague control over the past century. The third section discusses structural issues affecting access to vaccines, which are essential for bringing COVID-19 under effective control. The fourth section identifies a number of challenges China is facing in global health governance. The final section offers a few concluding thoughts, reiterating the nature of interdependence in the global search for enhancement of health security.</p>