The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed major weaknesses in the international community’s pandemic surveillance system and raised important questions about China’s efforts to flout global health standards. At the center of these debates sits the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized UN agency with a history of prioritizing political over technical considerations, often resulting in slow, ineffectual responses to outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases. These breakdowns have occurred in tandem with China’s growing UN activism, which Chinese President Xi Jinping explained at the 19th Communist Party Congress in 2017.1
Read Full Article »
