Pandemic stress is global, economic and social. The world laughs at our leader. The US provides no leadership, aid, sympathy or friendship anywhere in the world.
China steps in and steps up. Belts and Roads is a strategic, unstoppable effort to infiltrate, buy and influence. To work with, deal with and then own. Think about a mob boss, the Communists Chinese are doing the exact same thing. Handing out soccer stadiums in Africa. Buying businesses in economically depressed countries.
Nature abhors a vacuum. The lack of global participation by the US is a vacuum.