“Despite tough talk about a new divide, there has not been a major break in the number of travellers and migrants flowing between the world’s two biggest economies,” read research published in mid-January when the coronavirus was largely contained in China.
At the time there were only 41 cases reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan, while the first case outside mainland China had been reported a day earlier in Thailand.
The research paper published by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) downplayed fears of a decoupling of the “most basic and important” US-China link, human interactions and people-to-people exchanges, saying any concerns “seem exaggerated”.