File photo taken on November 23, 2016 shows the national flags of the United States and China during the 27th Session of the China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington DC, US. Photo: Yin Bogu/Xinhua

China did not start a "war" on the US in the coronavirus pandemic as some hawkish US officials such as Peter Navarro have suggested; it is instead those "morons" in the US like the White House trade adviser, who have started a war against their own people and waged a relentless smearing campaign against China in an attempt to cover up their complete failure in pandemic response, that have steered the China-US relationship to a dangerous crossroad, Chinese analysts said on Sunday. 

The latest rhetoric of war from Navarro represents a serious escalation in Washington's campaign against China in the wake of the pandemic and foreshadows an increasingly delicate conjecture for the world's most consequential bilateral relationship even after the pandemic, where an all-out confrontation in political, diplomatic, legal and financial realms is highly likely, the analysts noted.

Navarro, who is also an obstinate anti-China extremist, told Fox News on Saturday that China hid the virus, eventually spreading it to the globe, downplaying it through the World Health Organization (WHO), and gathered up all personal protective equipment (PPE) and made profits from it. 

"This is a war that China started" by spawning the virus, hiding it and hoarding PPE, he said.

But the fact is that far from waging a "war" on the US, China has acted sincerely and offered the US help based on humanitarianism, including ensuring supply of PPE and other medical products, despite the hostility from some US politicians, Chinese analysts said.    

Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday that as Navarro acts as a White House advisor, his remarks do reflect the US official stance to some extent, but China is already immune to such ignorant words and won't be surprised at all. 

"The US has the right to refuse China's assistance and also stop buying materials from us if they believe this is a war, as a result, we will see what would happen to American patients," he said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on her Twitter account on Thursday that China has provided a huge amount of materials to the US and she gave an example saying "as of April 20, China had provided the US with over 2.46 billion masks, meaning 7 masks for each person in the US."

Lü said "if people in the US and hospitals can't get enough medical materials, then they should question their own government."

Future bilateral relations are entirely up to the US, not China, but the rest of the world could see a fact - China is providing stable supplies and sent medical teams to help others, while the US does nothing to help but only show selfishness throughout the pandemic by grabbing medical materials from others, so to what extent can the US maintain its global influence and leadership, this would be in doubt as well, said Chinese analysts. 

Peter Navarro Photo: IC

War against US citizens

One thing is for sure, it's the Trump administration who launched "a war against its own people," and the longer Washington elites waste time in passing the buck to Beijing, the more severe consequences the American people would suffer, Chinese observers said. 

Navarro's latest remarks attacking China has brought the shamelessness and immoral behavior of US politicians to a whole new level after the US Republicans released an internal memo which urged to Republican senators to defend the president's coronavirus record and try blaming China instead, a clear evidence showing how US politicians attempt to scapegoat China for their political agenda for November elections at the cost of hundreds and thousands of American lives.  "Unless US politicians and elites see more deaths in the US, rendering their government incapable and accepting total failure in handling the pandemic, they won't come back as fairly reasonable," Shen Yi, director at the Research Center for Cyberspace Governance of Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

 "Navarro's comments just proved that, reflecting he is not capable of providing fact-based knowledge on the pandemic as an advisor to Trump," he said. 

In order to cover up the Trump administration's failure in handling the pandemic, US officials' wrongdoings, including tricks like shifting the blame to China, have so far caused more than 900,000 confirmed cases in the US, tearing many families apart and causing unforgettable pain for the public. 

Zhang Wenhong, a Shanghai-based infectious disease expert, pointed out "China provided gene-sequencing on January 11 and started full-scale testing from January 20. In contrast, the US only started large-scale testing from March 8." 

According to the latest data from the two countries, overall confirmed cases in the US are 10.6 times higher than the numbers in China. Its death toll is also almost 10 times higher than that of China.

More evidence has recently emerged to show it's the Trump administration that failed its own people due to the lack of an earlier response and preparation which should be subject to accountability, as more netizens on Twitter asked. 

US media reported that new autopsy results showed a Californian had died from COVID-19 in early February, three weeks earlier than the previously known first US COVID-19 death on February 29. 

This has sparked doubts over transparency inside the US government in dealing with the virus at the early stages of the outbreak, which might also change the whole pandemic timeline in the US. 

A man rides a bicycle with the U.S. Capitol Building in the background in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 21, 2020. The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 800,000 on Tuesday with deaths surpassing 43,000, while Americans are increasingly divided over when and how to reopen the economy. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Ties in a post-pandemic era 

While a war of words has been escalating between China and the US over the pandemic, Chinese observers said it's regrettable that US elites have not come up with the idea of fixing China-US ties by changing their attitude of defying and defaming China. 

"It's up to how much longer they can accept the fact of China's rise. If they can't accept this fact, they would continue to arouse more conflicts between the two countries," Ning Nanshan, a Shenzhen-based economist, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

It would be hard to predict what a post-pandemic era would look like as the US may likely face a second wave of an outbreak in winter at the end of this year when the flu season arrives, as the data today shows little optimism for the US to control the situation before winter, Lü said.

"Through communication with US scholars, we found many US elites are actually clear that the Trump administration has failed to control and prevent the outbreak in their homeland, but mentally, they also believed China is the origin of the mess, which is hard to change no matter what we said or did in the early stages to warn them how serious the virus is," he further said. 

Chinese experts predicted that the US might be aware of cooperation with China being the only right choice to overcome this global challenge after it realizes it can't save its economy on its own, but it's also possible it may launch an all-out offensive against China from political, diplomatic, legal and financial aspects, which could be another massive disaster after the pandemic.

What China can do is to try its best to make itself more stable, secure and certain as well as the biggest market around the globe, to become the first major economy that gets rids of the pandemic, and the only engine to pull the world economy from a great recession, only by realizing these, can we possibly avoid a worsening situation with the US, Lü said.

The rest of the world would also have a more objective and fair understanding between China - who is unselfishly helping everyone in need, and the US - who is selfishly hijacking medical materials from others, and this is also crucial, experts noted.

The US has been accused of "modern piracy" after reportedly diverting a shipment of masks intended for the German police, and outbidding other countries in the increasingly fraught global market for protective equipment, the Guardian reported on April 4.

At the same time, China is playing the role of a logistical center for the global fight against the pandemic to supply not only its close friends and neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, but also Western countries in Europe and North America.

Ding Yifan, a professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times that from the perspective of morality, it would be hard for the US to maintain its leadership in its US-led alliance to contain China, as its allies would lose faith in it. And they can fairly compare the behaviors between the US and China.

Lü said "although we can't predict what China-US ties would look like in the future precisely, one thing is certain - the national power and influence of the US will decline dramatically after the pandemic."