The World Health Organization director-general whose alleged pro-China bias prompted President Trump to withdraw US funding is scheduled to deliver a graduation speech Sunday at a top Chinese university.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will address graduates of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, the Beijing school announced Monday. His remarks will be “online” and it’s unclear if he will travel.
Trump halted roughly $500 million in annual US contributions to the WHO in April, saying the United Nations body failed to vet Chinese misinformation about COVID-19, which emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year.
Trump later ended the US relationship with the WHO, which he said failed to warn the world about the coronavirus and instead repeated false Chinese claims that there was no proof of human-to-human transmission and then false Chinese data on the number of infections.
“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” Trump said in a Rose Garden speech in May. “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds.”
Tedros, a former government official in Ethiopia, has faced much of the blame from US officials, who note that he praised China’s response, including its “transparency.”
The coronavirus has sickened more than 2 million Americans and killed more than 115,000. As a result of the pandemic, roughly a quarter of US workers filed for unemployment insurance payments.
A day after The Post requested comment, WHO spokesman Tarik Jašarević said in an email that the speech is unpaid and that “we cannot understand why this is a story at all.”
“When it comes specifically to universities, in the last 3 years, Dr Tedros delivered 15 speeches or video messages for universities in China, US, UK, Sweden, Sri Lanka and Spain,” Jašarević said. “Just in the past two weeks, Dr Tedros delivered a speech (virtually) at Columbia University, and recorded a video message for the City University of New York graduation ceremony.”