Chinese Foreign Ministry Official Claims the US Might be to Blame for COVID-19
A notable Chinese official working in the Foreign Ministry in Beijing claims the United States military could have carried the novel coronavirus to China and that the virus did not originate in the city of Wuhan, as is believed.
Posting a video with a heading on twitter, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian distributed a clip of Robert Redfield, the director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at the US Congressional Committee on March 11.
In the video, Redfield supposed some influenza deaths in the United States were later recognized to be cases of Covid-19, also known as the Coronavirus. Redfield doesn’t specify when these people have died or over what time frame, but Zhao believes that his comments are a proof of a growing conspiracy theory that the coronavirus did not begin in Wuhan, China.
“2/2 CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! The US owes us an explanation!” writes Lizhian Zhao on Twitter.
The Chinese claim that the US brought the virus to China comes after hundreds of participants from the US military were in Wuhan for the Military World Games which took place in October 2019.
Today, Zhao's colleague in the Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, claimed there were "varied opinions" on the origin of the virus. "China always considers this a scientific question, which should be addressed in a scientific and professional manner," he stated while refraining from answering questions on whether Zhao's tweet embodied the Chinese government's official opinion.
"The infection was first spotted in China but the virus may not have originated in China," Zhong Nanshan, an expert in infectious diseases, said at a press conference.
"We don't hope to see anyone making an issue out of this to stigmatize other countries. With COVID-19 developing into a pandemic, the world should come together to fight it instead of leveling accusations and attacks against each other, which is not constructive at all," said another diplomat from the Foreign Ministry.
Yesterday, Zhao's superior who leads the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Information, tweeted a link to Redfield's testimony, stating that it was "absolutely wrong and inappropriate to call this the Chinese coronavirus."
This furor from the Chinese officials may as well be directives coming straight from Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. The core aim of this theatrical façade might be to counter-propagate of what the West has to say about the Chinese originated virus, which is throbbing the whole world at the moment.
By B.Alexishvili