China says US intelligence report into Covid-19 origins will unleash new wave of anti-Asian racism
- Embassy in Washington denounces ‘unscientific’ report for ‘scapegoating’ China and warns it will prompt violence and discrimination
- The report compiled by the intelligence service was inconclusive, but could not rule out the possibility the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory
“The US government has asked its intelligence agencies to conduct a so-called origins tracing report, which presumed China’s guilt, to scapegoat China for its own failures in fighting the virus.
“The Chinese embassy solemnly warns Chinese nationals in the US to step up their safety precautions and be alert to the discrimination and violence on Asians.”
The issue has become one of the major flashpoints in the already strained relationship between the two countries.
Beijing perceives Washington’s actions as politically driven, while the US has accused China of a lack of transparency and failing to cooperate with international investigations.
But in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV aired on Sunday morning, Zeng Yixin, deputy head of China‘s National Health Commission, said the Chinese government had been cooperative and open in assisting the WHO’s investigation by “bringing them to see who they wanted to see” and “bringing them to places they wanted to visit”.
“The fact that the report was done by intelligence departments instead of medical institutions is already ironic, and it is also clear who wants to politicise these problems.
“Origin tracing is a scientific matter and the Chinese government has always supported a scientific approach,” Zeng said.
Zeng called on the US to encourage cooperation among scientists and support research into Covid-19 origins in many countries, including America.
Before the US report was published, the Chinese embassy released a commentary rejecting suggestions the virus could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whose work includes the study of coronaviruses.
It said the scientific consensus was that the coronavirus originated from nature but also suggested that the WHO should investigate whether the virus came from a US lab.
A WHO report published in March said it was extremely unlikely the virus had leaked from a lab, but the global health body’s head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, later said it was premature to rule out the theory and called for greater transparency from China.
Elsewhere on Sunday, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily published an opinion piece attacking the “incompetence” of the US intelligence services.
It did not directly mention the Covid-19 origins report, but did refer to a senior US commander saying the rapid collapse of the Afghan government could not have been predicted.
“People are often deeply affected by American movies and have many fantasies about US intelligence being inscrutable and all-encompassing,” the article said.
“But the [Taliban] takeover of Kabul in Afghanistan has already revealed to the world how incompetent the US intelligence community is.”
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Advocates for Asian-Americans have warned against rising anti-Asian hate crimes in the US since the start of the pandemic.
More than 3,800 incidents of verbal harassment and physical assault against Asians have been reported since March 2020, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based non-profit tracking hate crimes against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders.
