China Rejects US Report on COVID-19 Origins
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China rejects US attempts at politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic, calling its report political and false.
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Medical staff cheer themselves up before going into an ICU ward for COVID-19 patients at the Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan on March 16, 2020 (AFP)
China rejected a US intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus on Sunday, describing it as "political and false" while calling on Washington to "stop attacking" Beijing.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry's rebuttal came days after the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a complete version of its findings from a 90-day review conducted at the direction of President Joe Biden.
The document said, without new information, intelligence agencies would not be able to offer a better judgment on whether the virus emerged through animal-to-human transmission or a lab leak.
The paper added that China's cooperation would probably be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the virus's origins, accusing Beijing of "hindering the global investigation."
The "lab-leak" theory suggests the virus' origin is a research facility in Wuhan, the city in which the virus was originally reported. This theory remains unsubstantiated, and it has been facing constant rejection from China.
China had expressed firm opposition to initial findings published in the summary report in August, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded Sunday in a statement to initial findings published in August.
"No matter how many times this report is published and how many versions are concocted, it cannot change the nature of this being entirely political and false," he said.
The fact that intelligence agencies were tapped in origin-tracing efforts was "ironclad proof of politicization," Wang added, urging the United States to "stop attacking and smearing China."
Several states have been pressuring China to consider a fresh probe into the origins of the pandemic; pressure that came after a heavily politicized visit by the World Health Organization, whose experts could not find how the virus broke out.
The Biden administration has constantly been accusing China of "withholding critical information," which Beijing has repeatedly denied, as discovering the origin of the pandemic has become a heavily political blame-game matter rather than a public health one.
Despite US accusations and allegations, the report underscored that most agencies believed the virus was not genetically engineered.
