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Beijing urges Biden not to use coronavirus to "stigmatize" China
The remarks by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian came after Biden said Wednesday that he had asked the intelligence community to "redouble" its efforts to investigate the virus's origins and report back to him in 90 days.
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian packs up his notes after speaking at the daily media briefing in Beijing on April 8, 2020. (Agence France Presse/Greg Baker)
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hina on Thursday urged the administration of US President Joe Biden not to use the novel coronavirus to "stigmatize" the Communist-led government, as a debate over the virus's birthplace has been rekindled between the two countries.
The remarks by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian came after Biden said Wednesday that he had asked the intelligence community to "redouble" its efforts to investigate the virus's origins and report back to him in 90 days.
Recently, there has been renewed interest in a theory that the virus, first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, may have accidentally leaked from a laboratory there and spread throughout the world. China has denied such a view.
Zhao told reporters that a joint study by the World Health Organization and China on the virus's origins concluded it is "extremely unlikely" that it escaped from the laboratory, adding, "This is an authoritative, formal and scientific conclusion."
"But some people in the United States have completely ignored facts and science," Zhao said while requesting Washington to work harder to curb the outbreak in the nation.
The previous administration under Donald Trump had pushed the theory that the Wuhan Institute of Virology might have been the birthplace of the virus, claiming some researchers there developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that three researchers from the institute became sick enough in November 2019 to be hospitalized, citing an undisclosed US intelligence report.
The newspaper said the findings could add weight to growing calls for a more thorough probe into whether the virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
