Kennedy sent a pre-recorded message to the World Health Assembly in Geneva, calling out the body for hewing to the CCP line during Covid.
China’s disproportionate sway over the World Health Organization has emerged this week as a prominent issue at the annual international assembly that sets the public health body’s agenda.
In a prerecorded speech broadcast during yesterday’s session yesterday at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. condemned the WHO for deferring to Beijing during the pandemic.
“Like many legacy institutions, the WHO has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international power politics. While the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding historically, other countries, such as China, have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public,” he said.
Kennedy went on to cite reports that the WHO suppressed early reports that Covid-19 was transmissible between humans, at the behest of the Chinese authorities.
President Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization on his first day in office, and the U.S. did not send a delegation to this week’s World Health Assembly. The executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the organization cites the “onerous” payments the U.S. made to it, compared with significantly lower Chinese contributions.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later issued soft criticism of China’s zero-Covid policy in 2022. Yet, when asked by National Review the following year whether he has any regrets regarding his handling of the situation, he insisted that it is “an outright lie” to say that he and his organization hewed to Beijing’s line at the outbreak of the pandemic.
Yet the WHO has continued to maintain a cozy relationship with the Chinese authorities. In November, the organization signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese government agency to advance “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls that body of medicine, widely regarded as pseudoscientific, “the treasure of ancient Chinese science and the key to the archive of Chinese civilization,” and has led an international push to promote it.
“China’s leadership and commitment to advancing scientific understanding of the safety and effectiveness of Chinese traditional medicine, as well as improving the accessibility and quality of these services within its national health system, are commendable,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, an assistant director-general of the WHO at the time.
In his speech Tuesday, Kennedy also called the WHO “moribund” and incapable of responding effectively to global health challenges. He said that Washington remains interested in working with other nations to promote public health and encouraged other countries to withdraw from the organization.
Kennedy also criticized the assembly’s adoption of a global pandemic response treaty Tuesday, which he said “will lock in all the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.”
In a sign of China’s efforts to get its way at the World Health Assembly, Beijing dispatched more than 150 delegates to the meeting — which is far larger than the typical national delegation that other countries send.
Under Chinese pressure, the organization has also continued to block Taiwan from engaging in its activities, a practice that Taiwanese officials believe cost the world millions of lives. Although Taiwan tried to notify the WHO about early reports of human-to-human transmission of the Covid virus, it was not allowed to put them into the international pandemic reporting system operated by the organization.
On Monday, the assembly, which comprises WHO member states, blocked Taiwan from participating in its activities for the ninth year in a row.
Taiwan’s allies brought a resolution that called for Taiwan’s inclusion in the assembly as an observer, with the potential to eventually join as a full-fledged member. After a brief debate, WHA president Ted Herbosa, the Health Secretary of the Philippines, said that the assembly accepts its general committee’s recommendation against adopting the resolution.
China blocks Taiwan from joining meetings at international organizations, asserting, falsely, that other countries accept its claims to the island. Although Taiwan is sometimes permitted to joint WHO technical meetings, Taiwan’s requests to participate in closed door meetings are blocked 60 percent of the time, Ambassador Tom Lee, the de facto U.N. envoy for his country, wrote in National Review this week.
While Taiwan was previously invited to join some meetings with more frequency prior to 2016, the Chinese Communist Party considers Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party a separatist movement and has punished the country since it won the presidency that year and in the subsequent election cycles.
During a 2023 press conference, deputy U.N. secretary general Amina Mohammed said that the U.N. should reevaluate its exclusion of Taiwan, as it holds back the cause of international development. She walked back those comments in response to a Chinese propaganda outlet’s questions during a press conference a week later.