Report: Communist China Covering Up Research On Coronavirus Origins

Report: Communist China Covering Up Research On Coronavirus Origins

Communist China is actively clamping down on the research into the Wuhan coronavirus’s origins, an investigative report released by the Associated Press on Wednesday shows.

The report based on leaked official documents and interviews with Chinese and other scientists reveals that Beijing is hiding and censoring findings related to the origin of the global pandemic that first surfaced in central China late last year and has killed close to two million people worldwide. 

The cover-up is being coordinated by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party top brass, the AP documentation suggests. The Chinese regime has forced “all coronavirus studies in China to be approved by high-level government officials” and thereby “paralyzed research efforts,” the report said.

Beijing has repeatedly rejected the U.S. demands for an independent investigation into the outbreak. 

Here are some excerpts from the AP report published on December 30: 

The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by the AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.

As a result, very little has been made public. Authorities are severely limiting information and impeding cooperation with international scientists. (…)

The AP investigation was based on dozens of interviews with Chinese and foreign scientists and officials, along with public notices, leaked emails, internal data and the documents from China’s cabinet and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It reveals a pattern of government secrecy and top-down control that has been evident throughout the pandemic.

As the AP previously documented, this culture has delayed warnings about the pandemic, blocked the sharing of information with the World Health Organization and hampered early testing. Scientists familiar with China’s public health system say the same practices apply to sensitive research.

“They only select people they can trust, those that they can control,” said a public health expert who works regularly with the China CDC, declining to be identified out of fear of retribution. “Military teams and others are working hard on this, but whether it gets published all depends on the outcome.” (…)

Research into COVID-19’s origins is critical to the prevention of future pandemics. Although a World Health Organization international team plans to visit China in early January to investigate what started the pandemic, its members and agenda had to be approved by China. (…)

As the virus continued spreading rapidly into February, Chinese scientists published a burst of research papers on COVID-19. Then a paper by two Chinese scientists proposed without concrete evidence that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory near the market. It was later taken down, but it raised the need for image control. (…)

Internal documents show that the state soon began requiring all coronavirus studies in China to be approved by high-level government officials — a policy that critics say paralyzed research efforts. [Emphasis added by the author]

The AP report comes exactly one year to the day when whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang took to the Chinese social media warning about the spread of the virus in Wuhan. On December 30, 2019, he sent out the first message to fellow medics about the new contagion. The police arrested Wenliang and accusing him of “making false comments.” The 34-year-old medic died two months later after he contracted the virus in Central Wuhan Hospital. 

Communist China’s crackdown on Wuhan virus whistleblowers has continued ever since. On Monday, a Chinese court handed a four-year jail sentence to a journalist, who was among the first to report on the Wuhan outbreak. 

The Trump administration has been vocal about the Wuhan cover-up and the treatment of Chinese whistleblowers.

“Her hasty trial, to which foreign observers were denied access, shows how fearful the CCP is of Chinese citizens who speak the truth,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to the journalist’s trial. 

President Donald Trump has been one of the few world leaders to question China’s role in spreading the pandemic. For that, he has been viciously attacked, both by the Chinese regime and the U.S. mainstream media. 

The regime has slammed President Trump for the “stigmatization of China.” A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman even called the U.S. President approach “racist and xenophobic.” 

The mainstream media back home agreed. “Trump has no qualms about calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus.’ That’s a dangerous attitude, experts say,” The Washington Post lamented. The New York Times also found exports who claimed that the President’s use of the “term could result in xenophobia.”

While the mainstream media kept their guns trained on President Trump and let China easily off the hook, the Communist regime has been busy pushing a misinformation campaign to mislead the world. In March, China’s foreign ministry blamed the U.S. Army for letting the virus lose in Wuhan. Beijing recently claimed Italy, and subsequently India, to be the source of the Chinese virus. 

“President Trump calls on world to ‘hold China accountable’ for pandemic during U.N. address” (September 2020) 

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