The US and China — in the midst of a global health catastrophe and facing the worst economic crisis since World War II — have chosen the path of open hostility.

After weeks of escalating tensions over the coronavirus, Chinese telecom company Huawei, Taiwan, national security and technological development — literally everything that matters between the two countries — these Hong Kong measures take the fight between the new countries to a new level.

An extreme group of politicians within the GOP — led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — is still claiming, without providing evidence, that the virus may have escaped from a Chinese research lab in Wuhan. .

The world won't stop asking questions about the country's initial response to the virus — which was horrendous — and President Xi Jinping is encouraging diplomats to respond to those questions with something called "wolf warrior diplomacy" — a heightened public aggression against any Chinese descent from anyone anywhere.

China watchers like Charlene Chu, an analyst at Autonomous Research who is known for her deep knowledge of China's financial system, find it impossible to square that GDP number with the rest of the stats that came out of China in the first quarter.

While 91% of Chinese companies have reopened, two-fifths of them are operating at under 50% capacity according to Chinese business surveyor China Beige Book.

So while the rest of the world is taking extraordinary, historic measures to push money through their financial systems, China is taking it slow.

But so far, China's coronavirus economic stabilization effort is both smaller compared to its efforts in the past and smaller compared to the rest of the world's.

To get it there and keep it there the world needs supplies manufactured in part by China — facemasks and ventilators and all manner of equipment.

In 2018 — the most recent year for which we have data — China supplied the world with 50% of its respirator masks and surgical masks, medical goggles, and protective garments.

Instead, in press conference after press conference, Trump has cast blame on China for the coronavirus.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is spouting his still-evidenceless theory about the origins of the coronavirus — claiming that it was from a Chinese lab — all over conservative media.

In the Senate, Republicans like Florida's Marco Rubio and Arkansas' Tom Cotton are calling for more aggressive restrictions on China from limiting investments in the country to blocking Chinese students from studying math and science in the US.

China's diplomats are currently armed with a new mandate from Beijing to be as aggressive as possible, especially when it comes to messaging about the virus in keeping with something China is calling "wolf warrior" diplomacy.

It's a heightened state of aggression where Chinese diplomats attack anyone from anywhere who says anything negative about China.

Chinese state tabloid the Global Times put it has described it as an end to the days when China could be put "in a submission position." And reasoned that it is a logical response to The West's "hysterical hooligan style diplomacy." Wolf Warriors, it said, are a necessary byproduct of China's rise.

Chinese diplomats spread rumors about the virus originating in the US and Italy, angering not just those governments but governments all across Europe too.

Angry French officials summoned China's ambassador to the country after an online post from an unnamed Chinese diplomat claimed French healthcare workers were allowing COVID-19 patients to die in nursing homes.  US intelligence officials believe that Chinese agents were behind fake government text messages that alarmed Americans about a coronavirus shutdown in early March.

In China hostility to foreigners has resulted in racist attacks against Africans , a reality African diplomats have complained about only to be met with aggressive denial from Beijing.

Weeks ago she was attacked by the editor of the Global Times, Hu Xijin, a man known for being a megaphone for Chinese government propaganda.

The attack went viral on Chinese social media, which the government has a firm handle on.

If the Chinese government is not interested in letting its own people rehash what happened, it will be even less interested in letting the outside world do so.

In an interview with the Center for Strategic Strategic and International Studies, Professor Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna — one of the world's top China experts — said that this is putting China in a position it has never been in before.

This was something the Chinese Communist Party had always said it would not do, vowing instead to focus on economic development.

Chu told Business Insider that over the next few years this is something China may need to worry about — a world where countries no longer trust it to be the maker of things.