MOSCOW (Dispatches) – China supports the ongoing scientific investigations aiming to track down the origins of COVID-19, but opposes the politicization of the matter, Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu says.
“We have been supporting science-based efforts on origins tracing, and will continue to stay actively engaged. That said, we firmly oppose attempts to politicize this issue,” Ma said as quoted by Xinhua news agency.
Ma urged the United States to “return to the right track of science-based origins tracing and cooperation in the face of the pandemic.”
On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden accused China of hiding critical information in relation to the origins of COVID-19.
A report released on Friday said the U.S. spy agencies remain “divided” on the origins of the coronavirus with the two main hypotheses being “natural exposure to an infected animal” and “a laboratory-associated incident.”
One agency, which was not named, argued with “moderate confidence” that the virus originated in a Chinese government lab while four others leaned towards the natural causes with “low confidence.”
“The U.S. intelligence community has recently compiled a so-called report on the origins of COVID-19. It is a mendacious report made up for political purposes and there is no scientific basis or credibility in it,” Ma said.
“The virus origins tracing is a complex scientific matter and it should and can only be jointly done by scientists around the world, but the U.S. has been obsessed with political manipulation and intelligence tracing in disregard of science and facts,” he added.
Stressing Beijing’s strong representations with Washington over the report, Ma said, “The United States has cooked up one story after another to defame and accuse China. The aim is to use origins tracing to shift blame onto China and spread the political virus.”
Ma said that Washington should stop slandering Beijing over the epidemiological crisis while the U.S. itself could turn out to have a role in the origin of the viral outbreak after investigating its own labs.
“The U.S. has been refusing to respond to the international community’s reasonable doubts on the Fort Detrick biolab and the over 200 overseas bases for biological experiments, trying to cover up the truth and avoid being held responsible. The onus is on the U.S. to give the world an answer,” the Chinese diplomat said.
“We once again urge that the U.S. should immediately stop poisoning the international cooperation on virus tracing and undermining global unity, and return to the correct path of scientific origins tracing and cooperation in the fight against the pandemic,” Ma added.
A team of international experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) visited Wuhan in January 2021 to produce a first-phase report, which was written in conjunction with their Chinese counterparts, but it failed to find a conclusive position on the origin of the virus.