BACK on Feb 17 when reports from Wuhan, China, painted the horrific scenes of hundreds of victims succumbing to the mysterious Covid-19 virus, the World Health Organization (WTO) sounded alarm bells over the dwindling supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers.

On the same day as the WHO warning, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump administration was sending China more than 17.8 tonnes of "masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials" and described the donations as "a testament to the generosity of the American people".

The announcement came a few months after Washington and Beijing concluded a so-called Phase 1 deal that marked a ceasefire of sorts in the Sino-American trade wars.

President Donald Trump - who has hailed the trade deal with the Chinese as one of his administration's major achievements, one that he was looking to highlight during his re-election campaign this year - went on to thank Chinese President Xi Jinping for China's handling of the novel coronavirus, shortly after American health officials confirmed a second case in the United States.

"China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus," the US president tweeted then. "The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank President Xi!"

US administration economic officials continued to insist for a while that the Chinese response to Covid-19 was more robust and transparent than the country's handling of the Sars outbreak in 2003, and backed by business executives, counselled the White House not to embrace the recommendations of health officials to impose a ban on flights between the US and mainland China.

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But as the number of deaths due to Covid-19 started rising in China, President Trump decided to side with his health advisers and announced a ban on flights from the country on Jan 31. Yet with trade in mind, President Trump continued to strike a friendly tone on China. Asked by reporters whether Beijing bore responsibility for the outbreak that originated within its borders, Mr Trump responded by talking about exports to China. "I was told by our great Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, that China's been buying a lot of our farm products. And I'm looking at different pricing, but China has, despite all of this . . . been buying our agricultural products," he said.

BLAME CHINA

These remarks were made at a time when other top administration officials led by Secretary Pompeo (who kept referring to the "Wuhan Virus" even after it was officially named Covid-19) as well as Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits who were placing the responsibility for the pandemic on China. They accused it of failing to provide the US early on with complete information about what was happening in Wuhan, and this, they suggested, explained to some extent America's slow and muddled response to the crisis.

In fact, some of Mr Trump's close political advisers - including Fox News television show host Tucker Carlson and former White House aide Steve Bannon, leading voices in the American nationalist movement - suggested that if anything, the president should raise the volume of attacks on China, and tell voters that the pandemic and its spread into the US only helped to validate his protectionist policies and his strategy of de-coupling the US and Chinese economies.

Some of these Blame-China voices, including Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, helped recycle a fringe conspiracy theory that suggested that the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicentre of Wuhan, while others compared what they call the "Chinese virus" to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, as the first shot in the coming war between China and the US. Some Chinese government officials, responding to the allegations, have claimed that the US military brought the virus to China.

"The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated," Secretary Pompeo asserted last month.

President Trump seemed to be under pressure from two opposing camps in his administration. First, there are the economic advisers - led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House aide Larry Kudlow, joined by his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner - who have been warning him that a full-blown diplomatic and economic confrontation with China may lead to the undoing of the Phase 1 trade deal, and at a time when the US economy is falling into recession, could unleash a trade war that would set major obstacles on the road to economic recovery.

At the same time, as he faces growing criticism of his handling of the pandemic crisis, President Trump might have been advised by his nationalist allies that ginning up tensions with the Chinese could help him distract from his domestic failures and rally the American people around him. After all, mobilising them against a concrete threat, China, could prove to be more effective than targeting a stealthy virus.

Referring to the pandemic as "the Chinese virus", and rejecting claims that the term fuels racism against Asian Americans, and by constantly bragging that his decision to ban flights from China may have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, President Trump has seemed at times to be allying himself with the China-bashing camp in his administration and in Congress, while at the same continuing to underscore friendly relations with President Xi and the significance of the trade deal with China.

In recent days, however, there have been signs that the president's economic advisers may be winning the day. President Trump and President Xi discussed the epidemic crisis during a telephone conversation, and agreed to work together in fighting the virus and in trying to revive the global economy. The Americans agreed to drop the use of "the China virus" and the "Wuhan virus" and the Chinese started shipping medical supplies to the US to help it fight the novel coronavirus.

But even policymakers in Washington who support continuing US engagement with China suggest that the pandemic pointed to long-term structural problems in the American relationship with the Chinese and accelerate the pressure to reassess them.

First, the pandemic has exposed worrying domestic shortages of critical medical goods ranging from safety masks to ventilators, along with potential shortages of pharmaceuticals, and the extent to which the US is now dependent on China for the supply of these and other strategic products.

Hence the White House and Congress are expected to take steps to break down this dependency on China, and to ensure that China would not be in a position to control access to critical technology during times of crisis.

GLOBAL LEADER

Moreover, while the pandemic has exposed how unprepared Washington was in such a crisis, the swift Chinese response to the outbreak and its success in turning the tide, returning to relative "normal", provided Beijing with an opportunity to take advantage of US mistakes and position itself as a global leader.

Hence if in the past the expectation during times of crisis was that the US would lead the international response, in this pandemic it is the Chinese who have been leading the effort in providing medical and financial assistance to Italy and other countries fighting the novel coronavirus, while the US is seen as being missing in action.

The concern in Washington is that the American response to the pandemic would be seen worldwide as the latest chapter in a series of failures, including the military fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 financial crisis, and that a more assertive China will try to fill the resulting global leadership vacuum in the post-coronavirus international system.

It is, however, not clear whether China is ready to replace the US as the leading global power or even if the Chinese are interested in playing that role. And it will probably take time to figure out which of these two superpowers would eventually emerge in a stronger position. It is not inconceivable that leaders in both Beijing and Washington will be forced now to recognise that only by cooperating with each other would they be able to revive the global economy and contain similar pandemics in the future.