The reporting comes as the official number of confirmed cases in the US exceeds the number of reported cases in China and the US faces the grim possibility that as many as 240,000 Americans or more could die from this virus.
The true extent of what China knew and when it knew it isn’t likely to be shared publicly anytime soon as the world struggles with the immediate threat of COVID-19, but damage done to the US-China relationship could take years to heal.
As part of a special series of expert-led, web-based briefings, The Cipher Brief spoke with Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, who is a former director of CIA's East Asia operations. DeTrani has also served as Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea and as a director of the National Counterproliferation Center. He is also a former special advisor to the Director of National Intelligence. This is an edited version of the briefing.
The Cipher Brief: Mr. Ambassador, thank you for being with us. Cipher Brief expert, Norm Roule wrote a great piece recently in The Cipher Brief about warnings over the Coronavirus that weren’t heeded. We saw what happened with SARS and other viruses, he wrote, so why hasn't the world put more pressure on China to take measures to stop these outbreaks?
Ambassador DeTrani: That was a very good piece. What we learned from the tragedy of SARS, was the importance of rapid response to detect and isolate patients, to limit transmission and reduce opportunities for transmissions within healthcare facilities. Early detection and open communication facilitated the immediate response necessary to control the SARS epidemic.
When you look at those lessons and you look at what happened with COVID-19 in Wuhan, one has to question whether China act as quickly as it should have? Did they isolate? Did they determine who those individuals affected by COVID-19 were? Did they isolate these people? What were the precautions taken? When you look at the public timeline on this, you'd have to conclude that China was more than a little slow.
A doctor from Wuhan Central Hospital reported on 30 December that he told his colleagues about a SARS similar disease that he was seeing. He was told by the authorities to cease and desist and stop making false statements. His supervisor also spoke about patients and cited the a nearby food market, which was adjacent to the hospital. And authorities also suppressed some of her warnings.
On the 31st of December, China did inform the World Health Organization of a number of Wuhan pneumonia cases that were of unknown origin. So, there was something building, and some would say maybe even in late November, China would've had some indication of this, but it wasn't until January 23rd of 2020 that China finally locked down Wuhan. I will say this, once they locked down Wuhan and they started testing and they started isolating patients and trying to mitigate the situation, there was progress. And I think we see this now with the number of cases coming down. We learned a lot from SARS and some of those lessons weren't applied as effectively as they should have been, but China acted to contain this a month and a half to two months after first noting that they had a problem.
The Cipher Brief: There has been some finger pointing back and forth as China even let the idea float that the US military was somehow responsible for this virus. Is that kind of disinformation likely to continue?
Ambassador DeTrani: I think it is going to continue and I think that's the tragic part of this equation. We saw this with some of the statements coming out of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and their Spokesman made statements that indicated the US introduced this virus into Wuhan, suggesting US army personnel who were there for an athletic event. This is preposterous and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made his views very clear on that. The statements were indicative of the fact that there was a policy decision at a significant level to allow a spokesman to make some of those preposterous comments.
The Cipher Brief: How do you think future business relationships with China are likely to be affected in the wake of COVID-19?
Ambassador DeTrani: I think they will develop. Hopefully China will move forward with the $250B in trade purchases that they've committed to.
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, Former Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea
I think we're interconnected with China in so many ways, but certainly in the business sector, we rely heavily on the supply chain and it goes both ways, I might add. We're purchasing so much more than China is purchasing from us, but nonetheless, I think President Trump has looked at leveling this playing field. So, I think on the trade and the business side, we'll get by, we'll get through COVID-19, but I say this in a cautionary way.
I think the overarching relationship is tense and becoming even more tense and there's a sense in China that the US is trying to contain China and there are elements in China that feel very strongly that China is a rising power and that it will eventually overtake the United States and that the United States is doing everything it can to prevent China from reaching its ultimate goal in this regard.
There will be a lot of bumps in the road, which means diplomacy is so critical during this very tense period where we can't assume anything. We just can't assume that business will keep moving forward even with the trade agreements, although, I believe they will. But that means we have to work even harder in the area of diplomacy. We need to ensure that there is transparency in that relationship and ensure that the irritants have to be addressed whether it's intellectual property theft, or the treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang or how China is seeing the militarization of the South China Sea. Those and other issues have to be discussed and they have to be discussed in a very meaningful way so that we can start building back some of the trust we had in the 80s and 90s that we've lost. The short answer is that I think business will move forward, but a lot of work is required.
The Cipher Brief: If we were to assume that this COVID-19 curve flattens in the US, which is the phrase we've been hearing a lot, and we see some gradual confidence come back to the economy as well as individual people's willingness to travel, what opportunities will exist, particularly when it comes to China?
Ambassador DeTrani: Assuming that the curve will flatten and hopefully that's the case and we move forward, I would say this has got to be issue number one for the United States, but also certainly for China, but also globally, because with globalization, we're all interconnected. It's not just the US, it's not just China, it's not just North Korea. We're all interconnected.
We’re going to need a full-court press on diplomacy, on working on the irritant and trying to build some of that trust into the relationships. These are overarching issues that could affect our bilateral trade agreements and certainly the close relationship we have in the business sector with China. Look, a summit at a high level, we've seen this with Kim Jong-un but this is China we're talking about. It's not Kim Jong-un. We gave credibility to Kim Jong-un with the presidential summits. But with China, it is necessary to need some agreements about what the playing field looks like and what a level playing field looks like. That speaks to reciprocity and that touches on what we've just seen with some American journalists recently being asked to leave China.
And we're doing that on the military side, we're doing it on the business side when we talk about intellectual property across the board. There needs to be an understanding and then a great significant interaction on working levels, not only business to business, which is extremely important. NGOs to NGOs, think tanks to think tanks, but also diplomats to diplomats, military to military, intelligence to intelligence, across the board. We have to start building some of that momentum and that trust because there are elements in China who are not enamored with the hawkish views that are being espoused in Beijing as we've just seen most recently with this ludicrous statement that the US introduced this virus into Wuhan. So, I think we have to bring some of that to bear.
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, Former Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea
I think it has to be a full-court press with China. There's no question about it because many people in China, some in the United States, believe we're in a cold war and eventually, we could stumble into a conflict and this is something we've got to prevent from happening and we should not even be moving towards a cold war environment. We have to move toward a closer bilateral relationship because some of the mutual objectives are important for the people of China and for the people of the United States.
But that means an element within the Chinese Communist Party has to realize that this nonsense about dominating regions and dominating the world and being the world's hegemon, is truly nonsense. To think that they're going to overtake the United States is ludicrous. Totally ludicrous. They have to be realistic and we have to work in a cooperative manner.
The Cipher Brief: What are the indicators that you're watching for that might signal a change either for more opportunity, which would be a positive change or indicators that things are somehow going south while we're all paying attention to the immediate threat posed by the coronavirus?
Ambassador DeTrani: COVID-19 is a key indicator right now. How this is going to be managed over the next few weeks is an indicator because the doctors and scientists are saying that we're a few weeks behind this, at least. It's going to get worse here. And I think we see the trend line in Europe and indeed in Southeast Asia where a number of the cases are increasing in the respective countries. If China can stop putting out these nonsensical statements about the US and how we introduced this virus to Wuhan and so forth... I mean, it's not only an egregious falsehood, but it’s also telling the United States that China is becoming reckless and that it’s behavior is similar to what we're seeing from the Russian Federation and from Iran. And that's wrong.
So, we've got to get this one right. We have to get the COVID-19 right. The CDC should be permitted to go into China and share information so that we can stop these global pandemics. There needs to be transparency. That's one of the first indicators I think we need to look for.
The second one is that we have a trade agreement and there's a commitment of $250 billion on the China side and if we can move them, we go to phase two of this trade agreement. That's positive. The president's been very positive on some of his comments that make it seems as if the US is moving forward with Xi Jinping. A summit with Xi Jinping could address some of the other irritants in the relationship. Get some interaction going, some momentum. We have to build back some of the trust that we've lost, and we've lost so much over the last three, four or five years in regard to the relationship with China.
Our relationship with China is worse than it was before. And it's not improving and unless we change that vector and unless we start moving in a more positive direction, I think things can get worse quickly.
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