China escalated the debate over the origins of COVID-19 on Wednesday, releasing an official white paper alleging that the virus may have emerged in the United States before surfacing in Wuhan. The document, issued by China's State Council Information Office and published by Xinhua News Agency, directly counters U.S. claims that a lab leak in China sparked the pandemic, calling the accusations politically motivated and unsupported by evidence.
"Substantial evidence suggested the COVID-19 might have emerged in the United States earlier than its officially-claimed timeline, and earlier than the outbreak in China," the paper states. Chinese officials argued that respiratory illness outbreaks between May and October 2019 in the U.S. could have been early, unrecognized cases of COVID-19.
The release comes just weeks after the White House launched a new COVID-19 website asserting that the coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan. That site sharply criticized former President Joe Biden, former NIH official Anthony Fauci, and the World Health Organization for what it called failures to acknowledge a lab-based origin. In response, China's white paper accused the U.S. of "shamelessly politicizing" the search for the virus's origins.
"The U.S. government, instead of facing squarely its failure in response to COVID-19 and reflecting on its shortcomings, has tried to shift the blame and divert people's attention," the report said. "A thorough and in-depth investigation into the origins of the virus should be conducted in the United States."
The debate over COVID-19's origin has remained unresolved for more than four years. In January, the CIA shifted its assessment slightly, saying the virus was "more likely" to have originated from a lab in China, though it noted this with "low confidence." Other U.S. agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Energy, have reached similar conclusions, also with limited confidence.
The Chinese white paper emphasized a joint WHO-China study that concluded in 2021 the lab leak theory was "extremely unlikely," a position China says is still widely accepted by the international scientific community. An official at China's National Health Commission said the next phase of origin tracing should "focus on the U.S.," according to Xinhua.
China has repeatedly pointed to a 2020 lawsuit in Missouri that sought $24 billion in damages over alleged Chinese mishandling of the early pandemic, using it in the white paper to argue the U.S. is politicizing legal tools and manipulating international discourse.
The report further accused the U.S. of ignoring its own early outbreaks, claiming Washington "downplayed the severity of the epidemic," often comparing COVID-19 to the flu and asserting it would vanish on its own. "The U.S. has made China the primary scapegoat for its own mismanaged COVID-19 response," the white paper said.
