NEW YORK -- "Blaming China for the coronavirus might seem like smart politics, but insulting a creditor when the U.S. is running up a huge debt to stimulate the economy isn't a good idea," Allan Sloan said in his columnist article on the Washington Post.

Insulting and demonizing China, the second largest creditor of the United States, just for domestic political reasons sure doesn't seem like the way to go about it, as it would instead put America in financial predicament, the Post said on Friday.

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WASHINGTON -- "Obviously China is several months ahead of the West, and it looks like Chinese domestic economic activity has picked up dramatically in the last month or so," Geoffrey Garrett, dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a video interview on Wednesday, referring to China's recovery from the impact of COVID-19.

He believed the problem for China now will be global demand. "The fact that there will be no global demand in the second half of this year will obviously slow down China's recovery, but so, the domestic drivers for the Chinese economy are looking much better and better every day."

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UNITED NATIONS -- China's success in poverty reduction has demonstrated to the global community that the first goal of "No Poverty" among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is attainable, a high-ranking United Nations official said Friday.

"China gives us an affirmation that SDG 1 - No Poverty is attainable even in a country with 1.4 billion population," Jorge Chediek, UN secretary general's envoy on South-South Cooperation and director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), told Xinhua in an exclusive interview through email.

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SAN FRANCISCO -- The governor of the U.S. state of Washington said Friday that decisions of reopening states should be driven by data and science, not the calendar, as more counties started reopening.

"We are making good progress as we continue to open Washington in segments. Currently, one-third of our state is now eligible to move into Phase 2. We are hard at work to determine next steps as we move closer to the May 31 expiration of my current order," said Jay Inslee in a statement.