Future of coronavirus vaccine and role of labs among latest shots fired in China-US propaganda war
- ‘No need to be shy’: China calls for US Senator to show evidence of efforts to sabotage vaccine development
- China’s consul general in Rio de Janeiro says Covid-19 can be traced to US military lab as superpowers move to lay coronavirus blame on each other
The latest exchange of tough rhetoric came on Monday as China challenged US Senator Rick Scott to show evidence supporting the accusation that Beijing was trying to sabotage the development of a Covid-19 vaccine by Western countries, days after a Chinese diplomat in Brazil asked Washington to explain the possibility that the pandemic had its origins in a military lab in Maryland.
“Since this lawmaker said he has evidence that China is trying to sabotage Western countries in their vaccine development, then please let him present the evidence. There’s no need to be shy,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in response to the Republican senator’s comments to BBC TV.
Scott declined to give details of the evidence during his interview on Sunday but said it had come through the intelligence community.
“China does not want us … to do it first, they have decided to be an adversary to Americans and I think to democracy around the world,” he told the BBC.
Hua said on Monday that the development of a Covid-19 vaccine was not a bilateral competition and that Beijing hoped the United States would mirror China’s pledge and offer any vaccine it developed to the world for free.
China and the US have been trading barbs over each other’s handling of the pandemic.
On Thursday, Li Yang, China’s consul general in Rio de Janeiro, made an unsubstantiated accusation that the Covid-19 outbreak in the US could be linked to a military lab in Maryland.
In an article titled “How long will the crimes of Fort Detrick continue?!” and published in Chinese and Portuguese-language media outlets on Thursday, Li said the US owed the world an explanation.
Without citing sources, Li said the closure of the lab in July last year was linked to an outbreak of a “mysterious pneumonia” detected in communities near the lab around the same time.
“Now more and more people suspect an association between the Covid-19 outbreak and Fort Detrick Biological Warfare Laboratories and strongly demand an international investigation, which has been refused by the US,” Li wrote.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) halted research at the lab in July because of a lack of “sufficient systems in place to decontaminate water”, according to a spokesperson from the lab in an interview with The New York Times last year. The CDC cleared the lab for reopening in March, after a new system for treating waste water was installed, according to military news portal Military.com.
Li’s article appeared to be based on a report published last week by Chinese state media tabloid, the Global Times, about Fort Detrick. It cited an unnamed Chinese biosecurity expert who said the installation had aided the Japanese in the past.
The article referred to an outbreak of a respiratory illness that occurred at a retirement home in Fairfax County, Virginia, 72km (45 miles) from Fort Detrick, but local health authorities told the Global Times the disease was the common cold.
Scientists around the world have said there is no evidence that the virus was man-made in the lab.
Li’s article follows a string of tweets from Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian in March accusing the US military of taking the virus to Wuhan.
Zhao circulated an article from a website of questionable credibility, globalresearch.ca, in which an author speculated that the virus might have come from Fort Detrick before being brought to Wuhan by the US army for the 2019 military games hosted in the city.
The article reposted by Zhao has since been taken down, and Zhao’s post has been flagged by Twitter for fact checking.
Additional reporting by Reuters
