he first big leader to livestream a message to the virtual World Health Assembly on 18 May was supposed to be Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa and chairman of the African Union, but something went wrong with the feed. Xi Jinping went first instead. We saw the president of China seated behind a highly polished table, in front of a mural showing rosy dawn creeping over the Great Wall. He promised billions of dollars to fight Covid-19 and invoked ‘planet Earth, our common home’. When the virus appeared in China, he said, his country had acted with ‘openness, transparency, and then responsibility’. Emmanuel Macron was next, bobbing and rubbing his hands as he spoke of humanity’s ‘fundamental right’ to health. Moon Jae-In, the president of South Korea, spoke of solidarity; Angela Merkel popped up to tell us wanly that the World Health Organisation was a good thing.
