A Chinese official has suggested that the US military might have introduced COVID-19 into China, without providing any evidence to support his eyebrow-raising claim.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) late on Thursday made the assertion on Twitter, echoing similar conspiracy theories proliferating on Chinese social media that blame the US for the pandemic.
The head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the source of the virus was wild animals sold at a market in the central city of Wuhan.
However, in the past few days Chinese officials and a prominent health expert have claimed that the virus might have originated elsewhere, while Beijing has angrily hit back at US officials for calling the disease the “Wuhan virus.”
In his tweet, Zhao posted a video of the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testifying before the US Congress that some Americans who were believed to have died from the flu were posthumously diagnosed with COVID-19.
“CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals?” Zhao said on Twitter.
“It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!” he added.
Zhao yesterday doubled down, tweeting an article that he said showed “further evidence that the virus originated in the US.”
The Montreal-based Web site (http://globalresearch.ca) on which the article appears is replete with conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Chinese officials have been accused of attempting to cover up the coronavirus outbreak as police in Wuhan reprimanded and silenced doctors who had raised the alarm about the virus as early as December last year.
US officials have angered China by linking the virus with the country, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling it the “Wuhan virus.”
The ministry has rejected the term as “despicable” and “disrespecting science.”
US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien on Wednesday said that the birthplace of the virus was China.
“This virus did not originate in the United States, it originated in Wuhan,” O’Brien said at the Heritage Foundation think tank.
“Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up,” he said.
China had “cost the world community two months to respond” to the epidemic, he added.
Had China been more cooperative and allowed foreign experts on the ground earlier, “we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what is now happening across the world,” O’Brien said.
Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) on Thursday called OBrien’s remarks “extremely immoral and also irresponsible.”
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