As US President Joe Biden approaches his deadline for intelligence agencies to hand over reports on the origins of the novel coronavirus, a source close to the matter told the Global Times on Tuesday that the US' push for the probes on virus origins was aimed at consuming China's diplomatic resources. The US is trying to find "loopholes" in China's epidemic control policy, and planning to continue pressuring the WHO and collude with its allies to pressure China in an attempt to discredit the Chinese government for "covering up the truth about the origins of the virus."

In May, Biden ordered intelligence officials to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China. He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal, and he asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

The source said that US intelligence officials are trying to find some witnesses or insiders during the initial stage of the epidemic in Wuhan, the city that first reported the outbreak in China, prying into the "lockdown measures" and "restriction areas," with people who work in the medical system, biological research institutes or those who live in Wuhan being their targets. 

The officials are also collecting evidence to prove the loopholes in China's anti-epidemic work, eyeing detailed information about COVID-19 patients, the lives of residents under lockdown, the timing of diagnosis, and patients' movements before infection, the source said. 

According to the source, the next step for the US government is to continue pressuring the WHO and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to make sure they would lean on the US. 

The US government will also collude with its allies such as Australia and media outlets to suppress China, in an attempt to accuse the Chinese government of "concealing the truth of the virus' origins."

Chinese virologists, as well as experts on US affairs, believe that the probe into the virus' origins has become an important tool for the US to attack, discredit and suppress China politically. For the US, it has nothing to do with science. 

The steps taken by intelligence officials show that Biden's intention to trace the virus' origins is entirely political, not scientific, Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, told the Global Times. 

The probe should be a technical issue that requires genetic analysis of the virus. Scientists in Asia, America and Europe should analyze the genetic profile of the virus that has emerged in the region and then discuss the information together to confirm the next steps of the investigation, Yang said.

However, what Biden's intelligence agencies are looking for can only serve as part of the evidence for him to fabricate a report to blame China, so that he would show his people that he is better than former US president Donald Trump, Yang said. 

A foreign expert close to the WHO-China joint team previously told the Global Times that the 90-day probe by the Biden administration on the virus' origins is a coordinated political campaign. 

"If former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had actual intelligence that would convince people, he would have released it," he said, noting that Biden has to address it because the Republicans are aggressive, pushing him to go down this path.

Yang Xiyu, a former Chinese diplomat and senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said the intelligence probes fully expose the fact that the US aimed to manufacture some materials to prove China is guilty, and the so-called probes that insult and discriminate against China will not stop.

"The intelligence officials' actions showed the US has launched a 'political war' against China through the probe of the virus' origins," Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

The US is trying to give the world the impression that the country could find the origins of the novel coronavirus in China by virtue of its powerful intelligence abilities and secret means, so as to "prove" the Chinese government should shoulder responsibility for what the US has suffered from the epidemic, Lü said. 

This is a "sick political war" that the US has waged, facing an unprecedented health crisis, Lü said. 

The expert said that it is a tradition for the US to launch a "political war" against countries it does not agree with. The US has seasoned organization, experience and planning prowess. Its purpose is to consume China's diplomatic resources, but the US should know that the "political war" is also a huge drain on US political and social resources, which is far greater than the actual loss of China.

Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University, also pointed out that the US has adopted similar strategies against other countries, and now it's on China, and the possibility that US intelligence agencies are making up material for ill-intentioned political motives could not be excluded.