BEIJING: In an abrupt shift, US President Donald Trump has stopped using the term “Chinese virus’ as he understands how much he will lose if the war of words and the blame game continue, which won’t help resolve the worsening pandemic situation in the US, analysts said.
Instead of being an open-minded politician, Trump has a native cunning while always being calculating, and is now trying to ease tensions with China to win some support for fighting the pandemic and gaining political points, analysts said. After days of maliciously referring to the novel coronavirus as “Chinese virus,” Trump was harshly criticized by medical experts, officials and Asian Americans in the US for using a term that was inaccurate and stigmatizing. In an interview with Fox News, Trump said, “We shouldn’t make any more of a big deal out of it,” promising to stop using the term that has sparked hatred and fueled global xenophobia. For shrewd businessmen like Trump, ceasing to call it “Chinese virus” only mean he sees that the cost of using such a racist term outweighs the benefits, said Shen Yi, an associate professor of international politics at Fudan University in Shanghai. The US president was unable to shift blame on China for his own government’s failure in dealing with the virus, and instead lost the support of US voters, which caused him much more pain amid the outbreak, Shen told the Global Times. Labeling the coronavirus as Chinese is now widely seen as Trump’s tactic to hide his administration’s lack of prevention and control measures against the coronavirus, which has resulted in more than 55,000 infection cases in the US. Chinese observers and officials said that Trump’s intention was to pass the buck to China, trying to prove that he is not responsible for the current situation the US is facing. However, blaming China won’t help him solve the problem, especially when the US is facing mounting pressure in dealing with shortages of hospital beds, nucleic test kits, protective gear for doctors and masks for ordinary citizens, leading to the healthcare system being overwhelmed, analysts said.
– The Daily Mail-People’s Daily News exchange item
