China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) that threatened to permanently freeze U.S. funding is an attempt to “shift the blame of U.S. incompetence.”
The spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said in a press conference that Trump’s Monday letter to the WHO director-general was full of ambiguous wording to mislead the public.
Zhao also said the U.S. administration violates its international obligation by suspending funding to the WHO.
Trump’s letter accused the WHO of repeatedly making misleading claims about COVID-19 and having an “alarming lack of independence from the People’s Republic of China.”
The letter said, “If the World Health Organization doesn’t commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization.”
Zhao said, “Picking on China while shirking and bargaining away its own international obligations to WHO, the U.S. has obviously miscalculated the situation and made a mistargeted move.”
