Beginning in early 2020, there has been a widespread saying on the Chinese Internet that Covid-19 was deliberately spread to China by the United States via the 7th World Military Games held in Wuhan from October 18 to 27, 2019, with the aim of helping Donald Trump win the trade war against China. As more clues emerged, similar suspicions have appeared in statements of spokespersons of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs several times in recent months, including today’s Zhao Lijian.
In June 2019, the Fort Detrick Biological Laboratory was ordered to suspend research work due to a leak, and almost at the same time, a respiratory disease occurred in Virginia and an “e-cigarette disease” broke out in Wisconsin, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian today.
According to the news on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China on June 21, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zhao Lijian presided over the regular press conference that day.
Bloomberg reporter: Sullivan, the National Security Affairs Assistant to the President of the United States, said that if China does not allow real investigations into the origin of coronavirus in its territory, it will face isolation in the international community. Does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have any comment on this?
Zhao Lijian: The U.S.’s remarks are outright blackmail and threats. China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition, and will never accept it. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, China has always adopted an open and transparent attitude and has unreservedly shared its prevention and control diagnosis and treatment experience with other countries. China has received WHO experts twice to come to China and released a joint expert group traceability research report with WHO, making positive contributions to global tracing work. To say that China said “no” to trace investigations is groundless, and to say that China is facing isolation from the international community is even more alarmist.
Traceability is a scientific issue, and it should be carried out by global scientists, and should not be arbitrarily politicized. This is the consensus of the vast majority of countries in the international community. The U.S. is blindly pursuing the so-called “international investigation” of political manipulation, using intelligence personnel instead of scientists to carry out relevant assessments, and introducing the so-called “logic based on power” on the issue of traceability. This is the opposite of most countries in the international community, and it is facing isolation in the international community.
The U.S. has repeatedly discredited and attacked China, not only to contain China’s development but also to blame itself for its inability to fight the pandemic. If the United States really cares about the truth, then quickly answer three questions:
First, who should be responsible for the US’s failure to fight the pandemic? So far, the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the United States has exceeded 33.54 million and 600,000 respectively. As a country with the most developed medical resources and technology in the world, the United States must consider how to comfort every American who has died of coronavirus pneumonia, how to hold responsible U.S. officials incapable of fighting the pandemic, and how to avoid a repeat of the tragedy.
Second, has the coronavirus spread in the United States long ago? The findings come after an NIH analysis of blood samples from more than 24,000 Americans collected in the first three months of last year showed that coronavirus appeared in the United States in December 2019, weeks before the first official confirmed cases. In December 2020, the CDC and the Infectious Diseases Society reported that antibodies to the coronavirus had been detected in blood samples from at least 39 people in California, Oregon, and Washington from December 13-16, 2019. For these early domestic cases, the US government should conduct serious and transparent investigations.
Third, what is the real situation of Fort Detrick’s biological experiment base? The Fort Detrick base inherited the devil’s legacy of the “Unit 731” of the Japanese invaders in China. The research scope of its laboratory involves certain bacteria that have been identified as “a serious threat to the health of the public, animals and plants.” In June 2019, Fort Detrick Military Lab was ordered to stop its research work after being inspected for not following procedures and having mechanical failures and leaks, while at almost the same time, unexplained respiratory illnesses began to appear in northern Virginia and a massive outbreak of e-cigarettes and vaping-related disease was reported in Wisconsin. To date, the U.S. government has been quiet, tight-lipped and secretive about these issues. Considering the U.S. government’s usual “gatekeeper theory,” its practice of destroying key evidence and manipulating communications in incidents such as the Tulsa genocide, and the U.S. intelligence community’s consistent practice of “lying, cheating, and stealing,” how can the U.S. side be convinced of what it is doing? How does the United States ensure its own transparency? Why does the United States not provide international experts with the necessary access to relevant information?
