Why is it not so surprising that a top Democrat who’s tussled with our Republican president recently would align with him against China and its lackeys, the WHO? Because: Antipathy to China is very much a bipartisan issue these days, and, really, it has been for the past 15 years. We post polls every day here that show 60- to 70-point divides between Republicans and Democrats on various policy issues. When it comes to views of China, though, the furthest apart the two parties have been since 2005 is 15 points.

Both parties are at a 15-year high in viewing China unfavorably, with each surging 21 points from their respective nadirs since Trump was sworn in. More Democrats have an unfavorable view of China now than Republicans did in 2017. What’s really interesting is how unfavorable views in each party have grown in tandem over the past three years despite the fact that the trade war with China is one of the signature policy developments of Trump’s presidency. Normally Democrats recoil from anything the president does; as such, you might expect China’s favorability to have *grown* on the left since the trade war began. Not so. To the contrary.

It’s not the pandemic that China has bequeathed to the world that’s soured Americans on them. That trend was already in motion, but COVID-19 has taken it to historic and possibly irreversible levels. The relationship between the two countries — and China’s economy — will likely never be the same.

As for the WHO, or, as one Japanese official recently described it, the “Chinese Health Organization,” they’re getting a $30 million cash infusion from their masters in Beijing now that Trump’s announced his intention to defund them. That’s a propaganda move, of course, in line with China graciously selling hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests to Europe in the thick of the epidemic … which, er, turned out not to work. But I think it’s great if Beijing wants to pick up America’s financial slack: The more transparent China’s ownership of the WHO is, the sooner we can get to building some more ethical trans-Atlantic public health alternative. And if the WHO can’t get the same largesse from China that it’s gotten from us, it knows what to do. Dump its corrupt, dictator-hugging leadership, starting with Dr. Tedros, and reform.

Real reform this time, I mean. Not like last time:

The US after the 2003 SARS outbreak led a reform of WHO rules on how countries report public health threats, resulting in international health regulations that went into effect in 2007 that outlined how countries disclose data.

Those rules also gave the WHO’s director-general the ability to go public when a country failed to follow those guidelines.

“That didn’t happen in this case either, ” Pompeo said.

“We continue to insist this is an ongoing requirement for transparency and openness,” he said, adding the reporting is “critical to saving lives today and in the future.”

I suspect the WHO leadership is calm right now, assuming that Trump will lose this fall and Biden will return things to the status quo. That’s possible; lefties do love corrupt international institutions. But look again at that Pew data up top. As thousands of Americans die each week due to a Chinese lie aided and abetted by the WHO, it gets harder for even a milquetoast Democrat like Biden to resist reform. We’ve crossed the rubicon with China, even if Biden has to be dragged kicking and screaming across it as well.