China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin. Photo: VCG

The US has been advocating the investigation of Chinese labs on the COVID-19 origins tracing, which contradicts its stance on the matter of probing its biolabs, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday, noting that the US has the world's most biological weapon activities with the least transparency. 

Evidence also shows that the US has been politicizing the COVID-19 origins tracing work by ignoring scientific evidence and facts. Its aim is to smear China by turning it into a bioweapon issue first then a lab leak hypothesis, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the ministry, told a routine press conference on Monday. 

The Chinese official cited US media outlets that reported that former senior State Department official Christopher Ford published an open letter showing how the State Department and its Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance promoted the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered as a bioweapon, directed by former US state secretary Mike Pompeo. US officials have also shifted from the bioweapon conspiracy to the lab leak hypothesis given the mistakes in relevant documents. 

It shows that the true intention of those US politicians who turned origins tracing into a political wrestling was to smear China, and when the bioweapon conspiracy did not work out, they promoted the lab leak theory, which must be rejected by the international community, Wang said. 

After reviewing all available intelligence reporting and information, the US National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence agencies reported that they believed the virus that causes COVID-19 was most likely created by "natural exposure to an animal infected with it, or a close progenitor virus," the unclassified summary of the probe released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence read.    

One intelligence agency believes that SARS-CoV-2 was most likely the result of a lab-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), it said.  

After the report was released, scientists around the world and Chinese officials lashed out at the US government, saying it shot itself in the foot by concocting a "presupposed investigation" to throw mud at China, and ended up making itself look bad in front of the world.

The COVID19 origins report released by US intelligence agencies is an anti-science political document, serving as an excuse to slander China, just like how it accused Iraq of holding weapons of mass destruction, Wang said, noting that the US wants to use this report to mislead the international community. 

He also urged the US to explain why its intelligence agencies were used instead of scientists that conducted the COVID-19 origins-tracing work? Why does it continue with the lab leak hypothesis without evidence? Why did it fail its own people on fighting #COVID19 but continue on smearing others?

In fact, the US has the most bioweapon-related activities in the world but the least transparency, Wang said, as a Biological Weapons Convention meeting took place on Monday. The US also rejected the protocol negotiations in 2001 while still refusing the relaunch of the talks in setting up multilateral supervision of biological activities and labs of each country. 

Recently, the US has been advocating the probe on the Chinese labs on the origins tracking matter, which goes against its stance of rejecting biolab supervision. While it continues refusing to open its Fort Detrick biolabs and its more than 200 biolabs for investigation, it still continues on pressuring the WIV, which is a contradictory, Wang noted. 

"The so-called transparency and openness is just an excuse of the US. On the origins tracing and multilateral supervision for bioweapon, the US is the one with the least openness and transparency," he said. 

During the ongoing meeting of Biological Weapons Convention, China will urge again to relaunch the supervision mechanism negotiation, which is believed to be echoed by many other countries.