China has refused to join the European effort to develop a vaccine against the Wuhan coronavirus, the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post reported.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, hosted a donor conference on Monday, seeking funds to develop a coronavirus vaccine and treatments.
China, which was invited to the event, refused to make any financial promises or offered to collaborate on the coronavirus-related research effort. Beijing “made no new financial pledges, nor promised to make any successful vaccine a common public good,” the Hong Kong daily wrote. Instead of pledging assistance, the Chinese representative, Beijing’s ambassador to the EU Zhang Ming, accused the other countries of playing the “blame games” over the pandemic.
Germany, Norway, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Saudi Arabia pledged close to € 7.4 billion (over $8 billion) for “tests, medicines and a vaccine,” German weekly Der Spiegel reported. The United States is also making strides in finding a cure for the virus. The country might be able to roll out a vaccine against the contagion by the end of the year, President Donald Trump indicated. “We are very confident that we’re going to have a vaccine… by the end of the year,” Trump said on Sunday at a televised town hall event at the Lincoln Memorial.
The South China Morning Post reported Beijing’s rejection of the Europe-led effort:
The European Union’s effort to raise new funds for developing and distributing Covid-19 vaccines has met with a cold shoulder from China, despite the bloc’s success in almost reaching its US$8 billion fundraising target.Not only was China the country that sent the lowest-level official to the online event on Monday, it also made no new financial pledges, nor promised to make any successful vaccine a common public good, as several participating countries have called for.Instead, Chinese ambassador to the EU Zhang Ming asked the world to stop the “blame games” over the coronavirus. He also outlined existing Chinese efforts, such as commercial sale of protective equipment and masks, to needy countries. (…)Zhang added that “panic and blame games are not useful at all” amid growing international calls – including from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – to investigate China’s role in the pandemic.Of the 43 countries that participated on Monday, only China sent an ambassador, while the others sent a minister, a prime minister or president, or even the monarch, as in the case of Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
The Chinese remarks at the European summit about the “blame game” came after Sweden asked the EU to investigate the origin and the spread of the virus, which first appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, home to the country’s high-security virus research lab.
“When the global situation of Covid-19 is under control, it is both reasonable and important that an international, independent investigation be conducted to gain knowledge about the origin and spread of the coronavirus,” Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren said on April 20.
China’s neighbors in the Asia Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand have also made calls for an international investigation into Beijing’s handling of the outbreak.
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, backed those assertions on Sunday, saying that there was “enormous evidence” that the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab.
“There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” Secretary Pompeo told ABC’s This Week. “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.” China was engaged in a “classic communist disinformation effort,” he added.
The mounting demands for an impartial probe into the coronavirus outbreak, which has so far infected 3.6 million people and killed over a quarter of a million people, have angered Communist China.
Beijing told the Australian government to retract its demand for an investigation into the outbreak or face a boycott of its goods in Mainland China. The regime even threatened to cut Europe’s medical supplies amid the pandemic after an official EU report concluded that China was running a massive disinformation campaign to cover up its liability for the global outbreak.
“The European Union toned down part of a report about Chinese state-backed disinformation because it feared Beijing would retaliate by withholding medical supplies,” the newspaper South China Morning Post, reported on April 25.
The Chinese intimidation campaign in the wake of the coronavirus shows how little the communist regime has changed more than four decades after the death of its founding father, and genocidal dictator, Mao Zedong. Thirty years after officially abandoning Maoism, Beijing’s ‘reformist’ mask is slipping once again, revealing its ghastly communist face beneath.
President Trump blasts China for covering up coronavirus outbreak
[Cover image via YouTube]
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