Covid-19, the largest global public health crisis in a century, should have been a time of global co-operation. Instead, the opposite has happened. Covid-19 has exacerbated and accelerated the hostility between China and the US, and the framing of Covid-19 itself has become a major political battle.  Xi’s China is no longer adopting the low-key approach enshrined in Deng Xiaoping’s foreign policy. While China’s emergence as a true competitor to the US began in earnest after the global financial crisis in 2008, Covid-19 has accelerated it into a new great power rivalry. To quote the prominent sci-fi writer William Gibson,…