Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying Photo: fmprc.gov.cn

The Harvard paper which claims the virus had circulated in Wuhan since last autumn is laughable, but the agenda behind it is not, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said a second time to rebuke the paper, indicating it was deliberately manipulated misinformation to attack China, and should be condemned by international society.

This paper has so many flaws that it cannot be taken at face value, but some US politicians and media believe they have dug a treasure out of this flawed paper, which is preposterous, said Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a Thursday conference. 

Hua asked whether this preprint paper, which hasn't been peer-reviewed, represents Harvard University's standards, or if it was just operated by an individual or several individuals.

One of the authors, John Brownstein, also contributes to US broadcast network ABC, who reported on this paper and obtained data before the paper was even published, Hua said. She pointed out that the time shown on some of the satellite pictures was marked as May 2019 according to the ABC report (the paper claimed they took the picture on September 2019). "I don't know if this is negligence or if there are other problems behind it."

Hua said a key pillar of the paper was the search of cough and diarrhea. After much media digging, they found the search of those two words was less than the same period in 2017 and 2018. "Does this mean that the virus was circulating in Wuhan in 2017?"

Using this casual way of dealing with something as serious as the virus origin "is befuddling," Hua said. But it is such a strange and flawed paper, and has been treated by many US media and politicians as treasure and ammunition to attack China on its "cover-up" of the viral spread, she said. 

"Behind this laughable situation, the intent and agenda are not that laughable," Hua noted. 

I think this is new evidence which proves some people in the US orchestrate, deliberately create and spread fake information to attack China, which should be condemned by international society," Hua said.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Hua also dismissed the findings when asked to comment. "To derive these conclusions from phenomena such as road vehicle traffic is preposterous," she noted. 

Global Times