China's foreign ministry says a U.S. call for a new investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is "political manipulation and blame-shifting." China's embassy in the U.S. called it a "smear campaign."
U.S. President Joe Biden this week called for that country's intelligence agencies to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.
News media in China was in a frenzy Friday. One state-controlled newspaper said "scientists and foreign affairs experts from the U.S. and China said they don't expect a credible report from the untrustworthy U.S. intelligence community in 90 days as it is not a scientific institution at all."
"Directing the intelligence community rather than scientific professionals shows the U.S. is purely politicizing the tracing of the virus origins, considering the domestic political pressure Biden is facing amid the most intense-ever China-US ties," Global Times reported quoting several sources.
"And no matter what kind of report the intelligence agencies finally submit, it would only be a weapon for some US politicians to scapegoat China, they stressed, calling for the U.S. to reflect on its own problems and open its mysterious biolabs all over the world for investigations," the story continued.
China officials have denied accusations the spread of the virus was the result of a leak in a virology laboratory in Wuhan. According to their research, scientists in China believe the virus may have originated from a seafood market. Scientists theorized that the virus may have been passed to humans from animals.
The World Health Organization previously said it was "extremely unlikely" that the virus came from a lab leak. The organization sent a team to China to investigate the origins of the virus earlier in the year.
Biden said he wanted to know if the virus had emerged as a result of human contact with infected animals or if it came from a "laboratory accident."
Biden said the two scenarios are the most likely, according to many in the intelligence community. However, Biden said there was still insufficient information to assess which of the two scenarios was most likely.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian is opposed to Biden's call. Zhao accused the U.S. of having no interest in "serious science-based study."
"Their aim is to use the pandemic to pursue stigmatization, political manipulation and blame-shifting. They are being disrespectful to science, irresponsible to people's lives and counterproductive to the concerted efforts to fight the virus," Zhao said.
Meanwhile, some proponents of the lab-leak theory said the virus emerged on the doorsteps of the world's leading laboratory in the study of coronaviruses.
This raised the question of whether the virus was the result of a leak or a worker getting accidentally infected.
