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Published: 11:52, August 16, 2021
Politics must not drive origin-tracing
By Zhang Yunbi
Published:11:52, August 16, 2021 By Zhang Yunbi

The United States’ relentless push to make China the sole focus of COVID-19 international origin-tracing has become an integral part of Washington’s evolving strategy to contain China’s growth and influence, observers said.

Fixating on China helps advance the US’ ideology-based alignment with allies and could also reshape the political agenda, downplay its policy errors and win more domestic voters, officials and experts from around the world said.

Over the past few months, some Western countries, including the US, have been lobbying the World Health Organization to launch another COVID-19 probe in China despite Beijing’s open welcoming of the completed WHO investigation.

In particular, Washington has publicly alleged that Beijing devoted “enormous resources to deceit and disinformation”, and it vowed to continue to “demand transparency”.

Any politicization of COVID-19 origin tracing should be resisted, Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo has said.

“For us, at the moment, definitely, the enemy should be the pandemic, not each other,” said Bartolo in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua. 

“Confrontation is the worst thing,” he said. “Making China an enemy doesn’t make sense.”

Sending letters to the WHO director-general and issuing statements, around 70 countries have objected to the politicizing of COVID-19 origin-tracing and underscored their support for WHO’s report on the virus, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.

Su Xiaohui, deputy director of the Department of American Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said there has been a bipartisan, common choice in the US to scapegoat China over the origin-tracing issue.

The poor US COVID-19 response may lead to further political setbacks for the US Democratic Party in the midterm election next year, and “the need for advancing a domestic political agenda” has prompted the administration of President Joe Biden to turn a cold shoulder to potential COVID-19 response collaboration with China proposed by Beijing and other countries, Su said.

“If it cooperates with China in the COVID-19 fight, it will be unlikely for Washington to divert domestic pressure and (they) will face a series of attacks from Republicans,” Su said.

On Aug 2, Michael McCaul, lead Republican of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, released a report claiming that the novel coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sometime before September 2019, saying the WIV, aided by US experts and Chinese and US government funds, was conducting gain-of-function research.

In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said US congressmen have smeared and slandered China “in pursuit of political gains”, and Beijing strongly condemns “such despicable acts, that have no moral bottom line”.

The spokesperson advised US congressman McCaul to urge the US government to release the medical records of unexplained outbreaks of respiratory disease cases in the country in 2019 and urged Washington to stop “political manipulation under the pretext of the epidemic and shifting the blame to others”.

Medical experts and Chinese officials have repetitively clarified that WIV has not conducted any “gain-of-function” experiments on multiple occasions, which is part of the groundless “lab-leak theory” causing doubts and concerns among the public.

Gain-of-function research involves altering a pathogen, usually a bacterium or virus, in a way that increases its transmissibility, in order to better understand the pathogen and develop vaccines. Such experiments are highly risky and could lead to disaster if mismanaged.

“The WIV has not conducted any gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, and there is no so-called man-made virus there,” Zeng Yixin, deputy head of China’s National Health Commission, said at a press briefing on COVID-19 origin-tracing on July 22.

Renowned US expert Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had said in May, “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

It is unethical for the US government to shift blame for its failure to safeguard the lives of its own people, and to scapegoat others by politicizing the origin-tracing of the COVID-19 virus, say experts. 

Buthaina Shabaan, Syria’s presidential political adviser, said Washington is unable to mislead anyone with its COVID-19-related accusations because “the world knows what the origin of these accusations is”.

It is not appropriate for the US to accuse China on this matter because China is the country that fought the pandemic with high efficiency and it is the country that offered help for many countries to fight the pandemic, she told Xinhua recently in Damascus.

Su, the CIIS scholar, said: “China and the US, both as major countries, should weather the storm and stay in the same boat together against the pandemic, but Washington has chosen an approach that better aligns with its own interests rather than those of the international community.

“This will serve as an insurmountable obstacle against China-US teamwork and global cooperation in the COVID-19 response.”

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn


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