Suddenly, it’s no longer the “Wuhan virus.”
The United States and China have reached a truce in a vitriolic feud over the coronavirus pandemic, with the two powers each seeing at least a tactical interest in cooling down.
President Donald Trump, hardly known for the delicacy of his word choices, has dropped his provocative term “Chinese virus” and held back from criticising Beijing’s response since a telephone call, on March 26 US time, with his counterpart Xi Jinping. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — who so insisted on saying “Wuhan virus” that the Group of Seven foreign ministers could not issue a joint statement — has been talking of cooperation. “We know that this is a global pandemic, and this is the time for every country to work together to resolve that,” Pompeo said..
Beijing infuriated the United States last month when a foreign ministry spokesman spread a conspiracy theory that US troops brought the virus to Wuhan. Cui Tiankai, China’s gentlemanly ambassador to Washington, struck a highly different tone in an op-ed in The New York Times in which he spoke of his affection for Americans and promised China would do “whatever it can to support the United States.”
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus welcomed Cui’s remarks but called, civilly, on China to share virus data and allow free speech. “True cooperation requires transparency and real actions, not just rhetoric,” she said.
