Trump’s ghost lingers on

It is some months since the Donald Trump reign as head of state in the US came to an end – yet his ghost still lingers and looms much larger over President Joe Biden in the White House.

The Trump presidency was all about money and US economic interests – his administration remembered for the US-China trade war. His mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic further strained relations between the two countries – also creating animosity with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

So messy were US-China trade relations that at its peak by the end of 2019, the US had imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion (about R4.9 trillion) worth of Chinese goods, while China retaliated with import duties of their own worth around $110 billion on US products.

As Hinrich Foundation research fellow Alex Capri has observed, despite Biden’s less hawkish language, the US-China relationship appears “on the same trajectory as his predecessor – systematic rivalry, defined by techno-nationalist and neo-mercantilist competition”.

While the world is gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, with South Africa and other countries scrambling to find enough vaccines for their citizens, Biden, like his predecessor, has made one of his key priority projects to investigate whether the virus emerged from a lab in China.

What propels Biden to undertake such an exercise a year later following the virus outbreak? Cleared by WHO findings, the Chinese government has rejected the theory that the virus may have emerged from a Wuhan virology lab and has accused the US of peddling conspiracies and politicising the pandemic.

By ordering US intelligence agencies to investigate whether Covid-19 first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory – reporting to him in 90 days – Biden has reopened an old wound between the two countries.

This is despite the lab leak theory – originally hyped by Trump – having been dismissed by WHO as “highly unlikely”.

China has reacted sensitively to unfounded allegations that it could have done more to stop the spread of the pandemic that has killed over 3.4 million people and negatively impacted on the global economy, since emerging in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Referring to US unfounded allegations of “weapons of mass destruction” which led to the invasion of Iraq, Chinese ministry of foreign affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian has described the Biden administration’s motives as “clear”, adding: “The dark history of the US intelligence has long been known to the world.”

Reviving the old and unsubstantiated lab leak theory was “disrespectful to science and a disruption to the global fight against the pandemic”.

According to the WHO expert team which visited China, the natural origin hypothesis was that the virus emerged from bats, then passed to humans – likely via an intermediary species.

This theory was accepted at the start of the pandemic, but scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of Covid-19.

The problem with Biden’s approach in unleashing his country’s intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the virus is that the outcome of such a probe is discredited before it begins.