Mary Gallagher, Director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

The US should highlight China’s missteps through open sources of information, especially our media institutions and academic research. In particular, investigative journalists and academic researchers should analyze China’s official data on infections and deaths as there is likely significant underreporting.

We should highlight the institutional and regulatory failures that led to the delay in reporting and to the punishment of whistleblowers, activists, and journalists, which continues to this day. Media outlets outside of China should continue to highlight the censorship, repression, and information control that squash independent Chinese voices.

More generally, there should be a strong pushback against the official Chinese Communist Party narrative that President Xi Jinping and the party [have asserted], instead of against China’s citizens, civil society, and health care workers.

The US should reverse its decision to halt funding to the WHO. It should admit to its own mistakes from late January until early March in downplaying the severity of the virus. And it should spearhead an international effort to control the pandemic and develop a successful vaccine.

Read the full article at Vox.