Top US and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a telephone call on Friday that revealed wide divisions in a number of contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in Xinjiang.
Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that the virus might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.
Photo: AFP
Yang said that China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.
China “firmly opposes any despicable acts that use the epidemic as an excuse to slander China and to shift blames,” Yang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
“Some people in the United States have fabricated and peddled absurd stories claiming Wuhan lab leak, which China is gravely concerned about,” Yang said.
“China urges the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and concentrate on international anti-pandemic cooperation,” he said.
The US Department of State said that Blinken “stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for [WHO] phase 2 expert-led studies in China.”
The US and others have accused China of failing to provide the raw data and access to sites that would allow a more thorough investigation into where the virus sprung from and how it initially spread.
Equally contentious were the issues of Hong Kong and Xinjiang, as well as accusations that China has arbitrarily detained two Canadians in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of an executive of China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), who is wanted by US law enforcement.
The US has “fabricated various lies about Xinjiang in an attempt to sabotage the stability and unity in Xinjiang, which confuse right and wrong and are extremely absurd. China is firmly opposed to such actions,” Yang said.
“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs,” and those found in violation of a sweeping National Security Law imposed on the former British colony “must be punished,” Yang said. Blinken underscored US concern over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and the ongoing “genocide and crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” the department said.
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