Joint Fight Against Cancer Can Help Re-Energize U.S.-China Ties, Kevin Rudd Says

Collaboration in the fight against cancer represents an important opening for the U.S. and China to re-energize their relationship following the summit last month between U.S. President Joe Biden and China President Xi Jinping at the G20 gathering in Bali, Asia Society CEO Kevin Rudd said at on online symposium on Saturday.

“If we get this one right on cancer, it’s going to add this whole new positive dynamic to the overall framework of the U.S.-China relationship, which both presidents have signaled only last month needs to be re-energized,” Rudd told a gathering organized by New York-headquartered Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, or MSK, and Guangzhou-based Chinese Thoracic Oncology Group, or CTONG. “Prior to the Bali summit, it seemed as if the U.S.-China bilateral relationship was falling right through the floor,” he noted.

However, both Biden and Xi used the Bali meeting to try to stabilize ties, Rudd said. Xi, for instance, spoke about “the need to construct a security safety net underneath the relationship,” he noted.

For their part, American leaders are speaking of the need for “strategic guardrails around the relationship in order to preserve and protect each side’s strategic red lines and for China and United states to embrace a concept of managed strategic competition,” Rudd said. “I think what both countries leaders have decided to do at Bali last month was to put a floor underneath the relationship and to identify how it can be stabilized in the future in critical national security areas like Taiwan, while allowing for non-lethal forms of strategic competition in other areas of the relationship.”

“Within that framework,” Rudd said, there is room for collaboration in the fight against cancer between MSK and CTONG, as well as among regulators and businesses, on what President Biden has already called the Cancer Moonshot Initiative and “what multiple U.S. presidents have dedicated going right back to President Nixon as being a mission for all countries in the world to cure this insidious disease.”

“All of these efforts pointed in one direction, which is to find a “cure for cancer.” And prior to that, to advance the proper trialing of advanced cancer treatment drugs so we can get them to patients in China, in the United States and around the world who would otherwise die.” Some 10 million people will lose their life to cancer around the world this year, far more than Covid-19.

Other speakers included Bob Li, physician ambassador to China and Asia-Pacific at MSK, Yi-Long Wu, president of CTONG, Richard Pazdur, director of the Oncology Center of Excellence at the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C., Bi Jingquan, executive vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former commissioner of the China Food and Drug Administration in Beijing, and Jing Qian, the founding managing director of the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.

The event, viewed online by an audience of more than 20,000 in China, included discussion of international clinical trials with liquid biopsies, biomarker technology, and treatment of lung cancer.

The 3rd Forbes China Healthcare Summit in August discussed future directions for the Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative (see related posts below).

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Why Is Cancer Less Important To Cure Faster Than Covid?: Cancer Moonshot Pathways

Social Justice, Outreach, Global Collaboration: Cancer Moonshot Pathways

Break Through Barriers To Drive Progress: Cancer Moonshot Pathways

Biden Deserves Credit For Taking On Cancer: Cancer Moonshot Pathways

Accelerate Cures Through International Collaboration In Clinical Trials: Cancer Moonshot Pathways

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