Anti-COVID cooperation offers formula for better China-U.S. relations, say experts

BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Calling on Washington to seek cooperation with Beijing where national interests overlap, experts stressed that anti-COVID-19 cooperation between China and the United States has offered a "formula" for better bilateral relations.

In an article published in the South China Morning Post on Thursday, Cheng Li, director and senior fellow of the Brookings Institution's John L. Thornton China Center, and Senqi Ma, a graduate student at Columbia University, said that during the pandemic, medical experts and scientist from both countries have "communicated extensively."

As noted in the article, during the pandemic, the two countries conducted a series of cooperation programs and "sometimes started joint research projects."

The cooperation between epidemiologists and medical experts in both countries is "remarkable," and offers a "testimony" to how relations between the two countries should be handled, the article said.

Citing examples including "the institutional collaboration on pathogenic mechanism, clinical treatment and vaccine development," the experts said all these professional ties and exchanges laid a "solid and dynamic foundation of cooperation among medical professionals and other communities on which both governments can build."

In the article, they also called on the two countries to avoid competition "at the expense of much needed cooperation in some areas, especially saving lives."