my guests on socially distanced screens — isabel hilton of china dialogue and stephanie from bloomberg news. and stephanie baker from bloomberg news. welcome to both of you. and here in the studio we have the bbc‘s chief international correspondent, lyse doucet. welcome to you. let us start with the who developments. stephanie, is that defunding from president trump a symbol of american withdrawal from global leadership, or is it something else? well, it's another example of american withdrawal from global leadership, but i fear it's a more cynical political move than that. i think he's trying to shift blame for his mishandling of the crisis onto an international body, and the irony here is that trump himself praised china's handling

of the crisis back in late january and praised beijing's transparency, so it's ironic that he is attacking the who for having done nothing, but the real issue is that the who needs to be strengthened at this time of global pandemic. it's a tiny organisation relative to the scale of the crisis we are facing. the budget is something like $2 billion. it really ought to be beefed up rather than undercut. but i think the real issue is how does trump respond to this long—term? if he's to deflect blame for it on to the who, what is the future of the who if indeed he gets re—elected in november? we'll deal with the blame issue

in a moment but, isabel, first looking at china, if this is a distancing from global leadership by the us, will china turn around and offer a helping hand to the who and other international bodies at this moment? china has rarely missed an opportunity to step into a vacuum vacated or created by the us president. it could do. there's been inevitably with trump a huge exaggeration of the scale of the us contribution. the us country contribution is the largest, but that's because they are assessed on the size of the country's economy. the us has the biggest economy. china is the next biggest. then we have japan and germany and the rather familiar list. but trump in his speech exaggerated that contribution by a factor of four or five,

no surprise there. the other interesting thing about the who, which i absolutely agree is underfunded, but 80% of its funding comes from other contributions, either voluntary contributions by states or people like bill gates, who personally pledged $100 million to combat the pandemic a few weeks back. it's a damaging thing that trump has done, one of many. china could supplement the funding. i'm not sure that that would be very good for the credibility of the who, because actually before this pandemic there were big questions around the relationship with china, which had derived largely from the who embracing traditional chinese medicine in 2018, which caused a huge negative reaction in the global medical community. traditional chinese medicine, in addition to being untested

in a scientific sense, is also the driver of a huge amount of illicit wildlife traffic, which comes to the roots of this pandemic. so that's not a good move, and i think china would be well advised not to embrace the who too closely at the moment. lyse, widen this out into the international system more generally. the international secretary said covid—i9 is the biggest challenge in the organisation's history, 75 years. but the un security council seem to be missing in action. under a lot of disquiet and open condemnation for months, so much so that nine members of the ten non—permanent members of the security council finally pushed on april the ninth to have the first closed—door meeting of the security council. its delay was partially said to be, as we have already been discussing, the sniping between china

and the united states, two of the big beasts, the veto—wielding members of the security council. borisjohnson of course was ill, but they had that one meeting, and they discussed two motions, both focusing on fighting together against the global pandemic, but very little came of it. stephanie, coming back to this question of a retreat from global leadership, it's an obvious point, but the united states led the creation of these international organisations 75 years ago, and it did so because it perceived that an effective multilateral system with it in a leading position was in its own national interests. why does it see things differently now? it's really the us under trump, and we've seen him withdraw from international accords, everything from the iran nuclear deal, the transpacific partnership. he has defunded the un, he has paralysed the wto. so it's in keeping

with his undermining international institutions. i think there is support in the us for these multilateral institutions and international cooperation, and we'll find out how big that support is in november when the election happens and whether or not trump gets re—elected. but this crisis has exposed and exacerbated a tendency for national self—interest to prevail over multilateral cooperation. we've seen that in the scramble for masks, the us trying to get its hands on masks. in asia, germany, briefly stopping the export of masks, and this other scramble over supplies of reagents and swabs. so i think it's a broader point that during times of crisis there is a retreat to national

interest and in undermining of international institutions. we've seen that with the eu, and there is a real question mark over the effect this crisis will have on the eu. they are squabbling over the issue of shared debt to battle the coronavirus, the so—called corona bonds. again, it's exposing these divisions, which were apparent during the eurozone crisis of a few years ago. so i think this need for shared responsibility is even greater now, but i think there's a real fight for survival, and i think it's exposing the weaknesses of these institutions. isabel, your take on that. some people are calling this a g—zero wealth referendum on the failure of the g7, the 620. we've heard about the un security council. is this a world where we simply

cannot organise effectively in a multilateral fashion? i think it's almost worse. it's almost an anti—matter situation at the moment. we had a g20 meeting after the coronavirus became a pandemic, and almost nothing came out of it. it was absolutely startling. at the root of it is the trump administration's retreat, which we've discussed, and this toxic competition with china. competition with china is inevitable across a number of fronts. it existed in the obama administration, but there were large areas in the co—operation where it was beneficial to both sides and really flourished. i'm thinking particularly, for example, of climate change, where the obama administration and xi jinping reached a productive agreement. but i can't see this changing until the us election,

and that will depend on the results of the us election. until then, europe is providing some leadership on some things, at least individual voices are. in europe we have merkel at the end of her time, we have macron who hasn't quite made it as a substitute, hard as he is trying. we have britain in a state of political vacuum, still. so it's very difficult to see where it's coming from, where constructive leadership would come from at this point, and into a vacuum of course all sorts of negative forces rush. we have screening propaganda aimed at domestic constituencies coming from all sorts of places, particularly, again, the us and china and, in the middle of this, toxic disinformation and bad actors who simply paralysed

the political process, so it's not a great situation right now. let's spend a couple of minutes dealing directly with the sniping between the us and china. the pandemic almost turned into a proxy for this great power struggle. lyse, when the rest of the world looks at the constant sniping between beijing and washington, do they see a system superiority on either side as president trump or president xi might like them to see? or do they see, as in the words of william shakespeare, a plague on both your houses? we've already mentioned most nations, most individuals are looking inwards now, thinking about their family, their society, their own country, how to get enough masks and ventilators. the reckoning will come. it's not the moment now, when the crisis hasn't even peaked, but the reckoning will come.

what we've seen in crises in the past is that often crises tend to affirm people's beliefs that they held going into the crisis rather than changing them dramatically. would this have been on such a scale, permeating all aspects of our lives and relationships, that it would give us a jolt to think about it differently? but already there's discussion about who will be able to seize the moral high ground. which was the country which looked beyond its borders? what isabel mentioned about the vacuum, we have a little surge of power coming out of the engine room of world powers, with president macron on friday saying he spoke to president putin and that he spoke to president trump and borisjohnson, and they will have another meeting of the un security council, a virtual meeting of the five permanent members, to discuss a global ceasefire. people will say, who stood up for others? who helped out with masks and protective equipment when we really needed them? and people are saying, well, there's a lot of scrutiny now about using these unprecedented

powers, both in terms of technology of technology and our telephones and tracking et cetera. will that end quickly in some democracies? will some leaders say, when will we end this? we saw viktor orban in hungary taking unlimited powers for himself. there are others saying, look at president macron. he imposed one of the strictest lockdowns. who is he to criticise others? there are big questions, people are going to exploit this moment to start finger—pointing. but let's hope there's less of it than people joining hands together to work together. isabel, take us back to the chinese situation. they are obviously slightly ahead of the curve in terms of their experience of the worst of the pandemic and coming out the other end. it's obviously hard to get a sense of where the chinese public stand, given they live under an authoritarian system which doesn't believe in freedom of information, but insofar as you can judge, where do you think their mentality

is going to end up on whether it affirms commitment to their system or sends a jolt about their system? or sends a doubt about their system? well, as you rightly say, carrie, it's hard to be definitive, about chinese public opinoin, partly because it is 1.3, 1.4 billion people, but because we don't have access to it in the way we do in other countries. but there was a little window in late january around the death of that doctor, if you remember, the ophthalmologist in wuhan who had raised the alarm and had been rebuked by the police and publicly humiliated. he died and there was a huge outpouring of national feeling. around that time, chinese censorship seemed to falter. it's normally quite a strict system, but it seems a little off balance, not quite sure what to suppress, what not to suppress, it didn't know what it was allowed,

and we got a kind of window of two or three weeks where the strength of feeling was pretty impressive and the range of accusations against the authorities was pretty broad. now that's been shut down, but my sense is that these memories will linger, and one of the reasons that we are seeing this very crude and virulent chinese propaganda, like fake videos of italians singing the chinese national anthem and that sort of thing, that's not having a very good impression abroad, but it's really aimed at the domestic market, and the message that the regime is trying to convey to its own public is that china is being admired and loved in the rest of the world because the chinese government has dealt effectively with the pandemic, and it's trying to suppress all memory of the first month, five weeks, when lamentably

the chinese government did not act and allowed the epidemic to get out of control. those two narratives are going to be in competition and will remain in competition, i think, long after this is over. one of the negative results of the us—china situation right now is that it is not going to help us get to the truth of the origin of the pandemic, which we all need to know, in order that it does not happen again, or that we reduce the chances of it happening again, and indeed in these circumstances i think that is going to be very difficult. stephanie, a last word on you on this systems perception and sniping that you talked about originally. unlike china, american citizens do get to vote with their feet in

november. where are they currently? the federal government has shown its wea knesses the federal government has shown its weaknesses in responding to this and what you are seeing is individual states and governors are stepping in to fill the void and the vacuum that has been left by trump's mishandling and denial of the crisis. i think in many ways, obviously this is going to have an effect on the november presidential election, and that is what is paramount in trans‘s mind behind every decision he takes. it is all about getting the economy again so that by the time november comes around he is in better position get re—elected. but i think ultimately this strengthens the arguments of the democrats, who have argued for things like medicare for all. i think it has really exposed the weaknesses of the rhetoric we

have experienced over the past few decades about small government, low taxes, and revealed how important it is to have effective, well funded governments to be able to manage a crisis like this, which we don't have. i think neither china nor the us has handled this crisis very well. the thing that worries me going forward is if we find a vaccine, which i think we will, if there is a collapse in multilateral institutions in this competition between the us and china, who gets the vaccine first? there is going to bea the vaccine first? there is going to be a fight and a scramble over that andi be a fight and a scramble over that and i think that will get very serious. let's suspend discussion of the virus for a couple of minutes and look as we do now on a weekly basis at the stories we are neglecting. take us to your story that you would be talking about this

week at length. i have been keeping an eye on a story i always keep an eye on, which is what is happening in afghanistan, the unfinished business last time the world had a global september the 11th attacks in 2001. the taliban signed an historic deal to end america's longest war. by deal to end america's longest war. by now there should have been weeks of talks between the taliban and an afg ha n of talks between the taliban and an afghan delegation and that has stalled. the taliban attacks are escalating. there were some exchanges of prisoners this week, far fewer than were expected under the us— thailand deal, but at least a few steps. but there is huge worry about a night where nightmare scenario taliban with political infighting in carnival over two rival presidents under the threat of the coronavirus. that sounds challenging. isabel, what is your story of the week other than the

virus? the story of the week i think happened yesterday in hong kong with the arrest of a number of veteran civil liberties people, including the lawyer, martin lee, who actually helped to draft the basic law at the time of the handover, and jimmy lau, alpha media's media tycoon. about 17 very senior, peaceful civil protesters, or civil rights campaigners, have been arrested, and this is a major escalation in hong kong which follows just a few days from the new chinese representative in hong kong advocating a return of the security legislation which kicked off the whole protests in hong kong over the last 12 months.

under cover of hong kong over the last 12 months. undercoverof our hong kong over the last 12 months. under cover of our inattention, china really has moved to dismantle the basic law and take out from the scene and numberof the basic law and take out from the scene and number of people who are and who exemplify hong kong's responsible use of liberty, people like martin lee, really to see him under arrest is a shop. stephanie, if you can keep it brief, your story of the week. obviously i think the us presidential election has been pushed to the back pages because of the coronavirus crisis. it would be dominating news right now. bernie sanders endorsed joe biden this week and the democrats are now completely unified behind joe biden. it will be the most important election and will determine a lot of the issues we have been discussing today in terms of the us's role in terms of global leadership in the reinforcement of multilateral institutions. we only have a couple of minutes left, i

hope to talk briefly around all of you about the economics of all of this. it is a dimension in all of the stories you have mentioned and it isa the stories you have mentioned and it is a huge dimension of the virus story. the imf is now talking about the biggest global contraction since the biggest global contraction since the great depression of the 1930s. huge implications for everyone and most of all us. this is a virus that is said not to discriminate, it has touched everyone from the prime minister to the cleaners in the streets. it has shown the harshest of lights in the gross inequalities in our society, so it is the workers who basically live from hand to mouth, workers having been thrown out of work now, many in societies that have no blanket or buffer to give them money to hold them over. there has been a lot of attention to migrant workers across the middle east, including in the gulf,

millions of them. they are being quarantined where they are likely to contract the virus even more, or they have been told to stay—at—home and are not getting paid. there is so and are not getting paid. there is so much emphasis in the media about when are we getting out of the lockdown? when will we get back to live as normal? normal was not working for so many people across the world. the next big story will be the recovery. who will get those eye watering sums for the bailout? what about those who had nothing to begin with? having less and nothing is hard to contemplate. it is going to be savage unless many are saying let us use this opportunity to try to reorder the world as we know it, so to reorder the world as we know it, so that the inequalities we can somehow close the gap. it is a huge ask, but on the other hand we are living in unprecedented times. stephanie, coming back to points you have been making, an opportunity to close inequalities in the us with the presidential election coming up?

sure. ido the presidential election coming up? sure. i do think the scale of the economic devastation has not quite sunkin economic devastation has not quite sunk in yet. i echo what lees said, this assumption that we will get back to normal, that we will have this economic recovery once the pandemic is contained, but it will still have lasting effects on people's behaviour. i think there will be fear of going out, fear of spending in restaurants, fear of getting infected again. savings rates will rise because of people's fears for the future. i think we will see a broad depression in terms of lack of demand to get the economy moving again. the numbers this week of china reporting... stephanie, i have to give is a last thought on china on precisely that because we are in ourlast china on precisely that because we are in our last minute of the programme. china posting its first

contraction quarterly in modern history since the death of chairman mao, a big challenge. a very big challenge. what i think we will not see is a repetition of the financial crisis stimulus because that has left a legacy of debt, which is still a drag on the chinese economy. what one would hope to see is china accelerating its transition to green and low carbon, a hugejob creation opportunity and a huge opportunity for china to accelerate the transition it was struggling to make. china could really exert leadership there if it holds to that course. we shall see. i so wish we had longer, but that is it with this week. thank you all so much for joining us and thank you for watching. we will be back in the same place, same time next week. goodbye.

hello. it is a settled sunday a pretty much right across the country. there has been a little cloud in england and wales this morning and some of that cloud may be stubborn throughout the day. as you can see, it was a different story further north in scotland, a cold start, but absolutely beautiful, not a cloud in the sky. we are seeing scotland at its best at the moment. that area of high pressure is influencing the story, sitting to the north east of scotland. circulating around the high, the wind is coming off a cooler north sea, and it means along the east coast it will be a little disappointing. further west some of that cloud will linger through much of the day in south—west england and

also into northern ireland. elsewhere, it is dry and subtle, sunny, and as a result temperatures will be a degree or so up on where they were yesterday. the highest is likely to be 18 degrees. as we go through the evening and overnight, in the western peninsula we might see some showers moving up through the channel isles and the isles of scilly and will keep the cloud out to the extreme west. elsewhere, it isa to the extreme west. elsewhere, it is a relatively quiet night. temperature is low enough for a touch of frost in rural areas. monday will be another quiet day, the high pressure still sitting up to the north—east, but a few more isobars, which means the winds could strengthen further. certainly on monday and tuesday they will be noticeable. again, we could run the risk of a few isolated showers in the south—west. it is a dry and settle story throughout, but the wins will be a feature. in fact, as

we go into the afternoon, we could see gusts of winds in excess of 30 miles an hour, it may be stronger, and that will take the edge off the feel of the weather. temperatures will probably register around 12 or 13 on the east coast and 19 further west. as we move out of monday and into tuesday, it is a similar story. by into tuesday, it is a similar story. by wednesday we will see lighter winds and there is the potential for temperatures to climb up into the low 20s. dry and sunny pretty much for everyone.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the national care forum estimates that the number of deaths linked to coronavirus in uk care homes may be far higher than official figures currently show. reports the uk is looking to gradually lift some lockdown restrictions, such as re—opening schools and allowing some small social gatherings, are rejected by a government minister. protesters in several states in the us demand to go back to work, saying stay—at—home measures are too tough. millions of people across the orthodox christian world are marking easter weekend, and not all follow their governments' advice on social distancing. # i'm still standing. # yeah, yeah, yeah #.