As politicians squabble over who is to blame for a nationwide spike in COVID-19 infections since earlier this month, it is important not to forget where the virus originated and who is responsible for a manifestly containable epidemic mushrooming into a ruinous global pandemic.
Eighteen eminent scientists, including a Stanford University microbiologist and Harvard University epidemiologist, in an open letter published in Science on May 13 called into question the WHO’s conclusion that it is “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the letter, the scientists wrote that theories of accidental release remain “viable” and deserve “a proper investigation.”
Further evidence over the murky origins of the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced on Sunday last week when the Wall Street Journal reported that it had obtained passages of a US intelligence report, which found that three researchers at the laboratory sought treatment at a hospital as early as November 2019 — one month before China reported the first cases of COVID-19.
Beijing has categorically denied that the virus emanated from China’s first level 4 biosafety laboratory, and initially pushed the hypothesis that the virus had “jumped” from animals to humans at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which is just 12km from the laboratory. Chinese officials later orchestrated a disinformation campaign, flooding the Internet with wild and unsubstantiated theories, including that the virus was “bioengineered” by the US military.
Far too many politicians, scientists, media and technology companies were too quick to dismiss the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory, either swallowing Chinese propaganda hook, line and sinker, or cynically exploiting the issue for political purposes. As a result, more than a year into the pandemic, the international community is still no closer to discovering the origins of the virus.
Facebook — a tech company that has somehow become the arbiter of truth in the digital age — on Wednesday announced that it had lifted a ban on posts and news articles on the lab leak theory, having previously determined it to be false and misleading. However, Facebook was not the only entity guilty of stifling proper debate and investigation into the virus’ origins.
On entering office, US President Joe Biden’s administration shut down an investigation into the lab leak theory initiated by his predecessor. However, on Tuesday, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci appeared to pave the way for a U-turn on the theory. During a testimony to a US Senate panel, Fauci acknowledged that US funding might have been used for controversial “gain-of-function” research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. Then, on Wednesday, prior to Facebook’s volte-face, Biden confirmed the U-turn by instructing US intelligence agencies to “redouble” their efforts into discovering the root cause of the virus and deliver findings within 90 days.
However, the most serious aspect to this affair is that US taxpayers might have inadvertently funded biowarfare research at the Wuhan laboratory. Given that it is official Chinese Communist Party policy to promote “military-civil fusion,” that no independent access to the laboratory is allowed and that US intelligence agencies previously said that they believe Beijing is conducting a covert biological weapons program, the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from the lab, and might be linked to military research, should be taken seriously.
COVID-19 could be the world’s first instance of “accidental biowarfare” — an involuntary leak that was capitalized on by Beijing to further its strategic interests and damage its archenemy, the US. Chinese generals have a term for this: They call it “unrestricted warfare.”
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Delegation-level visits between the two countries have become an integral part of transformed relations between India and the US. Therefore, the visit by a bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers, led by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul to India from June 16 to Thursday last week would have largely gone unnoticed in India and abroad. However, the US delegation’s four-day visit to India assumed huge importance this time, because of the meeting between the US lawmakers and the Dalai Lama. This in turn brings us to the focal question: How and to what extent