US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China over the coronavirus on Wednesday, calling the US$2 billion that Beijing has pledged to fight the pandemic “paltry” compared to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars of damage.

Pompeo rejected Chinese President Xi Jinping’s claim that Beijing had acted with transparency after the outbreak in China, and said if Xi wanted to show that, he should hold a news conference and allow reporters to ask him anything they liked.