Based on Jun Sakurada’s Sankei Shimbun “Seiron” essay, this article examines the international order after the Wuhan virus crisis. China’s evasion of responsibility, its influence over international organizations such as the WHO, and the U.S.-China dispute over terms such as “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus” are not merely matters of wording, but questions of international politics that will shape the world to come.

April 7, 2020
What will the world look like after the Wuhan virus crisis subsides?
China’s external posture of evading responsibility.
Stop its influence over international organizations.
The naming issue is not a “children’s quarrel.”
The following is from an essay by Professor Jun Sakurada of Toyo Gakuen University, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun’s “Seiron” column under the title “What Will the World Be After the Wuhan Virus Crisis Subsides?”
Faced with the spread of the Wuhan virus crisis, Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the World Health Organization, WHO, declared a “pandemic” on March 11, and on March 13 stated that “Europe has now become the epicenter of the pandemic.”
China’s external posture of evading responsibility
Immediately before the WHO’s “pandemic” declaration, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan and declared the “domestic containment” of the virus crisis.
Since then, the external posture of the Chinese Communist Party government has become one of glossing over the fact that its failed initial response spread the disaster to other countries, while proudly flaunting its own superiority on the grounds that it achieved early “containment.”
The fact that some Chinese media have even adopted a tone calling on European and American countries struggling with the virus crisis to “reflect” can be said to be an expression of that pride.
However, this arrogant external posture of China, which is partly integrated with its evasion of responsibility, confronts us with the question of what sort of world will appear before people’s eyes after the virus crisis subsides.
Will it be a world in which, while Japan, the United States, and European countries are groaning in pain, China, which appears to have escaped from the virus crisis, pushes through its own intentions and behaves arrogantly toward other countries?
Or will it be a world in which such an external posture by China is nevertheless restrained?
Walter Russell Mead, professor of international politics at Bard College in the United States, wrote the following in an essay contributed to The Wall Street Journal, Japanese electronic edition, distributed on March 17.
“There are already signs that China hopes to use this crisis to strengthen its global position. … The provision of aid and propaganda claiming the superiority of the Chinese model of governance will gain supporters in many countries. That will be especially so if the United States and its allies are disengaged from international involvement. As this crisis continues, China will gain opportunities to strengthen security, economic, and political relationships with governments around the world. … As recession strikes and the pandemic attacks, leaders in the United States, Japan, and Europe must find ways to respond effectively to problems at home and abroad at the same time. If the Western countries turn inward until the storm passes, the conditions they see when the storm is gone and they look back upon a changed world may not be to our liking.”
As Professor Mead points out, if a world in which Chinese-style authoritarian values hold sway is unacceptable to the countries of the “Western world,” including Japan, then Japan, which for a time was made one of the “focal points” of the virus crisis alongside South Korea, Iran, and Italy, must consider the following two matters.
Stop influence over international organizations
First, now that suspicions have become strong that China is exercising influence over international organizations like the WHO and partially privatizing their “authority,” measures to stop such a trend must be taken as appropriate.
To begin with, the fifteen specialized agencies under the United Nations, such as the WHO and UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, were positioned as frameworks supporting the “liberal international order” after the Second World War.
But at present, four of their top posts are held by people from China.
This situation itself suggests the shaking of the “liberal international order.”
Recently, in the selection of the Director General of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, Japan and the European and American countries acted together to block the election of the Chinese candidate.
Efforts similar to this will become still more important.
The naming issue is not a “children’s quarrel”
Second, in the exchange of accusations between the United States and China concerning the “origin” of the Wuhan virus crisis, Japan should not adopt an ambiguous, spectator-like posture.
Regarding the virus that the WHO named COVID-19, after a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed that “the U.S. military brought it to Wuhan,” U.S. President Donald Trump called it the “Chinese virus.”
This reflected the political will of the U.S. government not to leave unquestioned the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party government for scattering the virus crisis among the nations of the world.
Therefore, no matter how much the Chinese Communist Party government reacts against it, the U.S. government will probably continue to use the terms “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus.”
This exchange of accusations between the United States and China over the naming of the virus must not be understood as a mere “children’s quarrel” unsuitable in the midst of a crisis.
The course of the current U.S.-China confrontation is directly connected to the shape of the world to come.
“How to call something” is the most primordial act of “politics.”
In this way, the response to the Wuhan virus crisis is already a matter that must be discussed not only from the perspectives of public health and the economy, but also from the perspective of international politics.
What people in the world should now ask themselves is this:
“What kind of world do we want to live in?”
Jun Sakurada