‘Political and false’: China rejects US intel report on COVID-19 origins
Beijing has dismissed as "political and false” a US intelligence report into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, urging Washington to stop smearing China for political reasons.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that Beijing had expressed firm opposition to initial findings of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence in August.
The agency has now released a full version of its findings from a 90-day review ordered by President Joe Biden.
"No matter how many times this report is published and how many versions are concocted, it cannot change the nature of this being entirely political and false," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.
He said that the fact that intelligence agencies were involved in origin-tracing efforts was "ironclad proof" of politicization of the pandemic, and urged the US to "stop attacking and smearing China."
The recent version of the US intelligence report, released Saturday, accused China of trying to "hinder the global investigation" into the origins of the virus.
It also said that without new information, intelligence agencies would not be able to offer a better judgment on whether the virus emerged via animal-to-human transmission or a possible lab leak.
The US has long been seeking to single out China as the place where the disease was originated. To that aim, Washington made a hypothesis that claimed the new coronavirus was leaked from a research facility in Wuhan, the central city where the contagion was first reported in December 2019.
China has repeatedly denied the allegation.
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