US President Donald Trump said on Monday that China could have stopped the coronavirus before it swept the globe and said his administration was conducting “serious investigations” into what happened. But China’s UK Ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, explained President Trump’s enemy is with the virus, not China and that the country wants to have good relations with the US. BBC host Stephen Sackur asked him: “In your view, how deep in the crisis with the United States right now, that has sparked by all of the accusations that have arisen from coronavirus, how deep is the diplomatic crisis?”
Speaking to BBC’s Hartalk, Liu Xiaoming said: “We certainly want to have good relations with the US.
“You know, I’ve been posted twice in Washington DC.
“I always believed that China and the United States would gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.
“And we have every reason to have a good relationship with the US, but it has to be based on mutual trust, coordination and non-confrontation.
“You need two to tango and since the outbreak, I think President Xi and President Trump keep very close contact.
“They have two telephone conversations, compare notes, just like President Xi has two telephone conversations with Prime Minister Johnson.
“You know, we want to build an international response to this virus.
“I just want to let Americans know that China is not the enemy of the US, it’s the virus that’s the enemy of the US, they need to find the right target.”
President Trump’s criticism was the latest from his administration to target China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which began late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has grown into a global pandemic.
Trump said at a White House news conference: “We’re doing very serious investigations. We are not happy with China.
“There are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable.
“We believe it could have been stopped at the source.
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“It could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world.”
The pandemic has killed more than 207,000 people around the world, including more than 55,000 in the United States, according to a Reuters tally.
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States “strongly believed” Beijing failed to report the outbreak in a timely manner and covered up how dangerous the respiratory illness caused by the virus was.
China’s foreign ministry denied the allegations.
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