President Biden halted America’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization on his first day of work. The premise of his decision is that reforming international institutions from within is more effective than leaving or withholding money, and this theory will soon be tested.
“China is in total control of the World Health Organization,” Donald Trump said last year when he announced the US would be leaving. That was a typical exaggeration, but he had a point. WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus was shocked by China’s response to the virus – “very impressive and indescribable” – when Beijing destroyed virus samples, neutralized whistleblowers and spread conspiracy theories.
WHO officials considered their vote personally, but calculated that the Chinese Communist Party would be even less cooperative if publicly criticized. The agency’s reluctance didn’t do much. A team of WHO experts went to Beijing in February 2020 to study the origin of the virus – when their chances of discovering how it was transmitted from animals to humans were significantly better than they are now – but the Chinese government hindered them.
Negotiations with Beijing continued into 2020. This month, Dr. Tedros finally complained that he was “very disappointed” with the delays. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in recent days that it welcomed the presence of the investigators shortly before they arrived. Take this as seriously as OJ Simpson’s promise to make finding his ex-wife’s murderer “my primary goal in life.”
According to media reports, Beijing has pushed WHO to delegate critical initial research work to Chinese scientists. At most, the WHO team gets incomplete data, as research into the origins of Covid-19 cannot be published in China without the approval of the Communist Party. The Chinese government also approved the members and agenda of the WHO mission.