 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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When you cover international news for an international newspaper like I do, it’s often important to think in really big terms: hard power and soft power, trade wars and proxy wars, world maps and macroeconomics. And without a doubt, I think people should read about treaties, military maneuvers and diplomatic summits. But I also try to remember — and I try to make sure our readers remember — that people’s lives hang in the balance. |
That’s why I’m so proud of some of the essays we’ve recently published by individuals caught in the middle of the growing conflict between the United States and China. I think there’s no bigger international news story in the years to come — except maybe the climate crisis — than this clash of superpowers. It will likely define the next decade and beyond. (But that’s probably a topic for another day.) The essay we published today by Yi Rao reminds you that this isn’t all just 5G technology and the South China Sea, though. |
Yi is a doctor and professor of medicine in Beijing who comes from a family of doctors. He has lived in both China and the United States, and has family in both countries, too. In his moving essay, Yi writes about how his uncle Eric died from Covid-19 in Queens when New York City was an epicenter; his family in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, survived. |
Yi’s father, a retired pulmonary physician, “is struggling to accept his brother’s death partly, too, because he believes that he could have treated Uncle Eric — that Uncle Eric would have been saved in China.” |
Yi writes: “As the pandemic rages on in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world, with some smaller outbreaks in China, the United States and China are not collaborating, but competing, in the search for a successful vaccine for the virus and treatment measures for the disease.” |
This family is just one of many — millions, I imagine — caught between the United States and China. Ian Johnson, a longtime correspondent in Beijing, wrote last week about being kicked out of the place he’d called home for years because of China’s conflict with America. (He wondered whether he should bring his martial arts paraphernalia with him when he left.) Yangyang Chen, a physicist at Cornell University and, in my opinion, one of the best new voices around writing about China, wrote an essay last month about how her identity means even her health care is a political issue. |
We’re still going to publish articles about Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. But I hope that when you read those, you think about these people, too. |
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Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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