“How many secrets are hidden in the U.S. Fort Detrick lab and other biolabs overseas from the rest of the world?” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian recently asked, raising the stakes in the global investigations into the origin of COVID-19.
China Pushes Against U.S. With Nuclear and COVID-19 Claims
It’s also never good when the editor of a state-run newspaper in China appears to link nuclear warhead production to U.S. inquiries over the origin of the COVID-19 virus. In the last week, Hu Xijin, the editor for the Global Times, discussed increasing the number of Chinese nuclear warheads to achieve a level that would make “U.S. elites shiver should they entertain the idea of engaging in a military confrontation with China.”
This follows a call by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson for the U.S. to “immediately launch a virus origins-tracing study on itself in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO), just as China has done.”
The Chinese increase in rhetoric follows calls by President Biden for the U.S. Intelligence Community to give him an answer on the origin of the COVID-19 virus in the next 90 days. China is taking every opportunity to paint the U.S. as the aggressor in the latest showdowns over COVID-19, human rights in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the ongoing genocidal activities against the Muslim Uyghur minority in China.
Editor Hu Xijin went on to call for more Chinese preparations for a possible “intense showdown between China and the U.S.” Hu specifically called for “increasing the number of commissioned nuclear warheads, DF-41s, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and strategic missiles.”
Offensive Moves Get Wilder
The Chinese Foreign Ministry claims that the United States is trying to scapegoat the Chinese for COVID-19. China is asking for the United States to explain a variety of disease outbreaks in America. Fort Detrick was named specifically as a place where the U.S. must be trying to hide its own mistakes.
The Chinese are on edge, not only because the U.S. intelligence community has not ruled out the possibility of a leak from a Chinese research facility, but because the British Intelligence community now also thinks that its “feasible” the COVID-19 pandemic started with a leak from a laboratory. China insists that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the source of the virus that has caused a pandemic that has taken over 3.5 million lives and counting.
China claims that the joint China-WHO investigation of the virus origin found the possibility of a lab leak to be “extremely unlikely.” China is claiming that it has been fully transparent, yet many international leaders disagree. China has called now on the U.S. to be as “comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based” as they have been and for the U.S. to launch a joint probe with the WHO to investigate the United States. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao said the U.S. intelligence community lacks credibility with the world and should not be trusted on this matter.
The U.S. investigations continue and the next round of U.S. and UK intelligence reports may shed more light on COVID-19 origins.
