Recently, China is once again under the spotlight regarding the origin of the pandemic. This was a topic of discussion at the Group of Seven (G7) summit. Even WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom, who had been on China’s side, has changed his tone. Although the United States has not received clear support from its allies to investigate the theory of “Wuhan lab-leak”, Beijing, under pressure, is definitely going to have to spend time and energy on resolving this.

What happened recently that prompted actions from the Biden government, who did not bother with pursuing accountability? For me, there are two main reasons:

1. Dubbed “Captain America” by the Democrats as the leader of the public in the fight against Covid, Fauci was caught in some “email controversies”. This is different from the WikiLeaks episode back then, when many shady behaviors were ignored by politicians because Julian Assange used hacking techniques to obtain information. This time, however, everything was legal. Buzzfeed, Washington Post, and CNN applied to disclose the contents of Fauci’s emails in early June under the Freedom of Information Act of the U.S. The 3,200 pages of emails not only showed that Fauci was volatile and contradictory in his responses in the fight against the virus, and a series of suspected conflicts of interest in the scientific community, but the very embarrassing thing for the Biden administration was huge funding for virus research sent to Wuhan Virology Institute for a “gain-of-function” research, which was backed by the National Institutes of Health, for which Fauci is the director.

Other than that, Obama reopened the gain-of-function virus research, which had been shut down prior, shortly after Trump won the presidency in 2016. Coupled with the Democrats’ various attempts to use the virus against Trump, this does not look good for the Democrats. After weighing the pros and cons, Biden announced on May 17 that the U.S. would supply 80 million doses of vaccines to foreign countries within six weeks, and at the same time consider holding China accountable for the pandemic. With the U.S. “participating”, China lost its edge in this global vaccine supply race,

2. China’s epidemic diplomacy and propaganda have been facing issues recently. The U.S. was not involved in the international community’s vaccine provision. According to data from London research firm Airfinity, as of the beginning of May, China had exported 252 million doses of vaccine overseas, accounting for 42% of its total production. In comparison, the U.S. had produced 333 million doses of vaccine, but only exported about 3 million doses.

For China, the most uncomfortable thing is the constant questioning of the quality of the China-made vaccines. Similar information has been circulating in Chile, Brazil, and Pakistan, although they have been successfully “refuted” by China. The most recent example came in May from Seychelles, an island country in the Indian Ocean. That island was reported to be leading the world with its covid vaccination, with 60% of its population getting the Chinese vaccine, and yet there was still a sharp increase in Covid cases. On May 12 and 13, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported the news, and Chinese state media immediately responded by publishing an interview with Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan, who personally refuted the claim that the Sinopharm vaccine was ineffective.

Why would President Wavel Ramkalawan contradict his people? Coincidentally, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Wall Street Journal published on the very same day an investigation report “The Covid-19 Story: Unmasking China’s Global Strategy”, which likely answered this question. Between December 2020 and January 2021, the IFJ research team sent surveys to journalists to 50 countries and 54 affiliate unions to explore the impact and influence of China’s global outreach strategy on the media ecosystem since the Covid outbreak. The survey results found that 56% of countries and regions investigated have seen more positive reports on China, compared to 24% which turned negative, and the remaining 20% did not see a change. One-third of the interviewees recalled that their media organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese organizations.

The report pointed out that since the Covid outbreak, whenever there was a report unfavorable to China, a counter-report with distorted information beneficial to China would be issued – China’s response to the Seychelles outbreak reports was exactly a case in point. The report also stated that 63% of the reports were along the lines of “China’s rapid action against Covid-19, as well as its medical diplomacy has helped other countries.” For the countries that do not receive assistance from China, 60% believe that “China’s concealment of the virus at the beginning of the outbreak led to a global pandemic.”

With the help of the WHO, Beijing continued to promote itself as the world’s model epidemic fighter, and the international community never took seriously China’s accountability as the origin of the virus. With the current Fauci email scandal, the Biden administration must clear up suspicions by cooperating – joining the second half of the global vaccine supply race, and formally propose to Beijing to conduct a second round of investigation on Covid origin. Considering the cause and effect of this incident, this is all a rebound of Beijing’s self-promotion as the global leader in the fight against the pandemic.

(He Qinglian, US-based scholar)

This article is translated from Chinese by Apple Daily.

Click here for Chinese version

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