The first time a China-backed candidate was named Director General of the World Health Organization, the president of the United States had other things on his mind. China had just a few years earlier botched its response to the outbreak of a flu-like disease, first covering it up and then underreporting the results. No matter. The president wanted stable relations with Beijing, and no one in his administration raised any particular objections to the selection for the top job at the WHO.
On November 9, 2006, Dr. Margaret Chan, a physician from Hong Kong, was appointed to her first five-year term, having garnered majority of support from the World Health Association — the nations who vote on top appointments to the WHO. Just two days earlier, George W. Bush’s Republican party had been hammered in midterm elections, losing both houses of Congress for the time since 1992. The Iraq war was heading south quickly, and in response Bush threw controversial Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the side, an acknowledgment that Iraq was a debacle. Who was going to run the WHO? In Washington the answer was simple: who cares?
The same was true five years later, when the Obama administration stood by as the pro-Beijing Chan — who appointed a slew of pro-Beijing bureaucrats during her tenure — was reappointed to another term. And when Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the now-controversial WHO director general, stood for election in the spring of 2017, the Trump administration paid little mind. Trump’s agenda when it came to China, as he had made clear during the 2016 campaign, was all about trade. “No one was particularly focused on [the WHO] at the time,” says a National Security Council staffer not authorized to speak on the record.
Tedros, an Ethiopian strongly backed by Beijing, easily won the directorship. The first non-physician ever elected to the post, he defeated David Nabarro of the UK, who had been nominally supported by Washington, 133 votes to 50 on the final ballot. The New York Times ran a bland story focusing on the fact that Tedros was the first African ever to become the WHO’s director…
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