In Defense of Chinese COVID-19 Science

Few Americans trust the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, and even fewer trust the integrity of Chinese scientific process. Western medicine, for example, is widely revered, while Chinese medicine is regarded as a hoax. While it may be true that the Western scientific process is more rigorous, this does not imply that America should blindly condemn Chinese science. After all, where would we be without it?

To begin with, we would not have learned about the virus until late December 2019. Doctors in Wuhan noticed pneumonia-like symptoms in their patients and alerted local health officials, sending critical information up the chain and launching the overall epidemic response. One could argue that China did not share COVID-19 details as soon as it could have. Indeed, local officials in Wuhan did try to keep information about the virus hidden, keeping Beijing officials in the dark until early January 2020. However, whereas the local government failed, Chinese scientists prevailed. Long before any official announcement, whistleblower scientists like Dr. Li Wenliang raised the alarm about the virus.

The virus's genetic sequence would not have been made public if it hadn't been for China. On January 5, 2020, just one week after the first official COVID-19 case was reported, Shanghai scientists shared the full genome of COVID-19 with the world, uploading the sequence to the open access Genbank database after 40 hours of near-constant work.

It's also unlikely that mask-wearing would have gained widespread acceptance if it hadn't been for Chinese scientists. The US CDC and the WHO were slow to endorse the practice, claiming that only sick people needed respiratory masks in the first weeks of the pandemic. The Chinese National Health Commission was the only major health organization to consistently stress the importance of masks for everyone, healthy or not. Because the US refused to follow China's guidelines, it now has more cases and deaths than any other country worldwide.

What about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine? There are a dozen vaccine candidates in China, five of which have already been approved for emergency use in China and several other countries. While the Chinese vaccine's efficacy, estimated by the WHO to be around 70%, falls short of that of its Western counterparts, it still outperforms the 50% goal set by American health expert Anthony Fauci. Furthermore, the Chinese vaccine's low cost and mass production capability make it an ideal candidate for global distribution. China had already exported its vaccines to 22 countries by February 2021, and it will soon provide vaccine assistance to 53 developing countries.

Will skeptics turn down potentially life-saving treatment in order to avoid crediting China? Given the narrow-mindedness of some anti-China zealots, the answer to that question might be “yes.” Some in the West, eager to dismiss any positive examples from China, point to COVID-19 success stories in other Asian countries like Vietnam. Those places, on the other hand, had weeks or even months to prepare for the virus, and they based much of their COVID-19 response on information from Chinese health officials. By ignoring China's experience, other Asian countries would have been forced to develop these ideas on their own, prolonging human suffering. For many Americans, scoring points against a country they regard as a mortal enemy is perhaps more important than accepting Chinese science. The Trump administration could barely contain its disappointment that a country of over a billion people had stopped the outbreak and prevented new cases and deaths. The virus provided them with an opportunity to criticize China’s system and show that Western democracy is superior.

That opportunity is now gone.  In the absence of a credible alternative to China's pandemic control methods, these cynics can only sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt to undermine China's success. The truth is that we already know we can trust Chinese COVID-19 science. We've known it since infection rates in China began to decline in March 2020. The fact that anyone can walk into a Chinese restaurant or bar and see a room full of happy customers proves that, at the very least, the Chinese people believe in their country's science.

Perhaps you still have reservations about Chinese science. However, once the developing world has returned to normal, in large part thanks to a Chinese vaccine, it will finally be time to embrace China as an important contributor to worldwide science.