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00:00In the case of Singapore it pretty much dropped the ball it overlooked a possible hot spot . You're absolutely right . Certainly we could have done a much better job in handling the challenge of foraging workers in dormitories. And as you know out of the 11000 plus cases in Singapore over 9000 cases come from their foreign workers and gone the trees. So if you look fortunately at the local citizens and the ISE the number still seems to be under control and that's around a thousand. So so but certainly we could have done a better job in handling the case of the foreign workers and what they need. Ed said the same time Singapore is being quite noble in its response in giving assurances to the families of these foreign workers in Bangladesh in India and elsewhere that we will take care of them and that that's a very very generous gesture on the part of Singapore. Which I think has been underappreciated . Kishore do you think there's been a flip flopping of policy. We went from you know needing to wear masks only when you're ill to mask being compulsory not wanting to close schools then closing schools and workplaces. Has hasn't been a flip flop of policies . I think it's important to emphasize such Linda that we are dealing here with an unusually tricky and difficult virus. It is not performing in the way that the previous pro viruses have done so which is that they start infecting people only up to the person who is infected displays the symptoms. So you could be in a sense anticipate where the infections are going to come from. We have a lot of transmissions via asymptomatic cases that just completely unexpected and stuff to deal with. So I think that when the government changes its responses I think it's right for you to change his responses when he gets new information and new data. But I want to emphasize one key fact . So just because people thing how intense how badly. Singapore has done in some areas that is true. But you know just to give you one concrete example to illustrate the difference the total number of deaths Singapore has had is twelve. And if the United States had the same ratio of deaths to population the Singapore has said it would have had six hundred and sixty two deaths instead of 50 50000 deaths . Now we have done something quite remarkable in ensuring that the people who suffer from this. We tried to provide as much assistance as possible so that those at two sites of the Singapore story. And we should acknowledge both sides of it . Kiss you as we tried to overcome this pandemic there's a tit for tat finger pointing going on between the US and China. In fact the state of Missouri wanting to sue China for this pandemic . What do you make of this. How will this play out in terms of relations between the two . Well I think it's it's actually it's extremely sad to see that Corbett 19 has actually aggravated the geopolitical contest within us and China. You know I've just written a book called Has China One which talks about the deep structural forces that are driving this geopolitical contest between us and China. And I think if we were reasonable if we claim to be the most intelligent species on planet Earth which is what human beings are supposed to be. Clearly since the US and China are now facing a common enemy an enemy Corbett 19 which has proven to be far more disastrous and far more damaging than anybody anticipated even two to three months ago the logical rational response should be for the US and China to come and work together to deal with a common enemy and that that that would be the rational response. So going to go for lawsuits and so on so forth . As you know viruses can break out anywhere. You know they they did on their own. And at the same time viruses don't carry passports. So there's no such thing as a national virus. It becomes any virus is a global virus immediately. So what we need is a global solution to a global problem. But on the key in the case of filing a suit by the state of Missouri I would say is very unwise because that would leave the state of New York open to suits from countries saying that when you had your Lehman Brothers collapse the whole world suffered because the Lehman Brothers collapsed. When are we going to get compensation for that so that that global crisis like this that we should focus on dealing with the crisis and not finger pointing or blaming each other . The shorts were shot in Hong Kong. Not if this is a fight for hedge money global hedge money. Then we all know that any excuse can be used to trigger a competition here as well. Is that what we're facing . Well I think there sadly is. This is what I document in my book . Whenever the world's number two power which today's China is about to overtake the world's number one power to date the United States of America you always see rising geopolitical tension. So I think there's nothing we can do to avoid that geopolitical competition between us and China because it's so that the two thousand year rule of geopolitics which tells us this is going to happen by the same time you know countries have cooperated in the past when they face a common enemy. So I think this is rational and logical for the world to ask both the U.S. and China to press the pause button. I'm not saying switch off. I'm just saying press the pause button for six months or one year and then deal with this common enemy of Corbett 19 and look to get the shot again. A concrete example. If President Trump for example was to announce today that he's going to lift all tariffs on Chinese products immediately and so that when in the post profit 19 world global trade would bounce back much faster than it could have. So there are steps that yes we can take to boost confidence in the future and the markets will respond positively if the U.S. and China show signs of cooperating rather than competing with each other against corporate banking . You should pick up on something that you were mentioning earlier and you talked about good governance in Asia and you actually included China in that and I think a lot of people would take exception to that . Yes of course they would. Because you know in the in the Western e.g. a logical framework hence a necessary condition of good governance is democracy . And clearly China does not have a democracy. So by definition under the Western e.g. logical definition China cannot have good governance because it doesn't have a democracy. But most most social scientists would measure good governance in terms of whether or not he's succeeding in improving the well-being of your people. And if you look at the overall record of the last 30 to 40 years no government has done as good a job as China has in improving the well-being of its people. And in fact the livelihoods of the Chinese people have done better in the past 40 years than they have in the past 4000 years. So here is a sad contrast. Let me add a statistic which is quite sad which is that the United States is the only major developed country where the average income of the bottom 50 percent five zero has gone down over a 30 year period. And this is another reason why I argue in my book has China one that the United States should focus now on improving the well-being of its people rather than engage in a geopolitical contest against China. So if your objective social scientists and you measure things like reduction of poverty growth of middle class improvement in health improvement and literacy by all these measurements . China qualifies for good governance . Kishore let me just jump in here. It is not just the US taking issue with China on the issue of the pandemic it's also Europe is also the UK. Now do you think governments will now rethink whether or not to use highway technology because of the rising distrust in China . Yeah I mean you're absolutely right Linda. There is rising distrust of China. Certainly in the case of United States nine out of 10 Americans now see China as a threat. I was quite shocked to see that figure. And you're right in Europe or so sentiment towards China as change. But of course you know we live in a very dark moment now where everyone is frightened about the future . Let's wait and see. And this is what I speak about in the post . Corbett Nineteen. Well after we have overcome Corbett 19 and we come back everybody is going to think very hard about what we can do to restore the world to where we used to be in the past . And there is a simple choice that the world has to make at that point in time. Are you more likely to achieve where you were in the past by working with China or working against China. Right .

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U.S., China Must Cooperate To Deal With COVID-19, ARI's Kishore Mahbubani Says

Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS, says the U.S. and China must cooperate, and not compete, in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He was speaking with Haslinda Amin and Rishaad Salamat on "Bloomberg Markets Asia." (Source: Bloomberg)

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