U.S.-China edge closer to confrontation
By Bloomberg News
On Jan. 15, it seemed like the U.S. and China had avoided a quick descent into a new Cold War.
In Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that “our relationship with China is the best it’s ever been” while signing a preliminary trade deal that “unifies the countries.” The pact between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping raised hopes that the world’s predominant superpower could peacefully resolve differences with a rising China.
That same day, health officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan acknowledged that they couldn’t rule out human-to-human transmission of a mysterious new pneumonia that had already sickened 41 people. A man who had visited Wuhan also arrived home in Washington state carrying the deadly pathogen -- the first confirmed U.S. case of the disease that would become known as COVID-19.
Four months later, the virus has prompted the worst global health crisis in at least a century, killing more than 300,000 people and plunging the global economy into a deep recession. The pandemic has also revived all the worst-case scenarios about U.S.-China ties, edging them closer to confrontation than at any point since the two sides established relations four decades ago.