ABBEY MAKOE
Pretoria - Chinese authorities are seething with open anger at the US President Joe Biden’s administration for its persistence that Covid-19 could have originated in a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China. In a rare media briefing, China’s ambassador to South Africa Chen Xiaodong lambasted the latest report emanating from Washington, which was compiled by the intelligence services within a 90-day period.
On August 27 the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the so-called key takeaways of the Summary of Assessment on Covid19 Origins. The report claimed that “China withholds information, refuses to co-operate and obstructs international investigation”.
The report was ordered by Biden after Washington’s unhappiness over a joint World Health Organisation (WHO)-China study group found in March this year that there was no evidence linking the origin of Covid-19 to a Wuhan lab.
In a scathing retaliation that appears to keep diplomatic decorum temporarily in abeyance, ambassador Xiaodong told a packed virtual press conference yesterday: “Some US politicians are obsessed with stigmatising the virus by associating it with certain countries and places. These moves do nothing but politicise Covid-19 origin-tracing. These politicians also attempt to pressure the WHO into conducting a so-called Phase II investigation into China. In the name of origin-tracing that should have been based on science, the US attempts to plant evidence to incriminate China.”
Bilateral relations between Washington and Beijing have been frosty since former US President Donald Trump’s mocking reference to Coronavirus as “China virus”. The public spat was also characterised by tit-for-tat economic sanctions and goods and services.
The Biden administration has continued with the country’s adversarial China foreign policy that sees Beijing as a major threat to the US and western global interests.
Covid-19 origin-tracing has become the latest focal point of political wrangling in the deteriorating US-China bilateral relations. It also affects the international geopolitics and the North-South relations. The story is made more important by China’s rapid rise as a superpower.
Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 90s, the US has enjoyed its status as the world’s only remaining superpower.
In May last year the 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted a resolution that was co-sponsored by more than 140 countries including China on Covid-19 response. The resolution called on the WHO to co-operate with all parties “to identify zoonotic source of the virus, the possible role of intermediate hosts and the transmission routes”.
On March 30 this year, the WHO released a report of the joint WHO-China study of origins of SARS-CoV-2, which had analysed the “four means of transmission”.
The report was authored by more than 30 top global experts in various relevant fields and was premised on science-based approach.
Notably, the report found that “the Wuhan lab leak theory is extremely unlikely”. The report put forward suggestions such as to continue to look for “more possible early cases in a wider range around the globe” and to “further understand the role of cold chain and frozen food in virus transmission”.
The joint WHO-China Study team agreed to recognise the scientific findings in the report. Respecting and upholding the findings was to serve as the basis for the next phase of global origin-tracing.
But China is enraged that although American participation formed part of the study group, Washington has elected to continue casting aspersions on the authenticity of the report.
Said Ambassador Xiaodong: “Whatever the US side says or does on origin-tracing has turned into nothing but a farce and a terrible scandal for the international community.” The US embassy could not be reached for comment.
Pretoria News