China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons for last 6 years

[IblinI]

By knowing what the virus can do who asked you to let it looe on the world? Stupidity confunded by follishness and incompetence. Why is everything the CCP does full of incompetence?

"Knowing what the virus can do"..in it's early phase..lol...87 IQ detected again.
with full knowledge of the virus, you nation still failed miserably..

 

[Ghost Hobbit]

"Knowing what the virus can do"..in it's early phase..lol...87 IQ detected again.

China is responsible for COVID
ONLY China is responsible for COVID
No Country other than China is responsible for COVID
Chinese policy makers have no shame

 

[IblinI]

China is responsible for COVID
ONLY China is responsible for COVID
No Country other than China is responsible for COVID
Chinese policy makers have no shame

You are chanting like these guys..

 

[Basel]

China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons


China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons - including coronavirus - SIX years ago, according to dossier produced by the People's Liberation Army in 2015 and uncovered by the US State Department

• Beijing has considered the military potential of SARS coronaviruses since 2015
• The bombshell document was accessed by US State Department investigators
• Scientists examined manipulation of diseases 'in a way never seen before'
• Foreign affairs committee's Tom Tugendhat says evidence is a 'major concern'

Chinese scientists have been preparing for a Third World War fought with biological and genetic weapons including coronavirus for the last six years, according to a document obtained by US investigators.

The bombshell paper, accessed by the US State Department, insists they will be 'the core weapon for victory' in such a conflict, even outlining the perfect conditions to release a bioweapon, and documenting the impact it would have on 'the enemy's medical system'.

This latest evidence that Beijing considered the military potential of SARS coronaviruses from as early as 2015 has also raised fresh fears over the cause of Covid-19, with some officials still believing the virus could have escaped from a Chinese lab.


The dossier by People's Liberation Army scientists and health officials, details of which were reported in The Australian, examined the manipulation of diseases to make weapons 'in a way never seen before'.

Senior government figures say it 'raises major concerns' over the intentions of those close to Chinese President Xi Jinping amid growing fears about the country's lack of regulation over its activity in laboratories.


The authors of the document insist that a third world war 'will be biological', unlike the first two wars which were described as chemical and nuclear respectively.

Referencing research which suggested the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced them to surrender, and bringing about the end of WWII, they claim bioweapons will be 'the core weapon for victory' in a third world war.

The document also outlines the ideal conditions to release a bioweapon and cause maximum damage.

The scientists say such attacks should not be carried out in the middle of a clear day, as intense sunlight can damage the pathogens, while rain or snow can affect the aerosol particles.

Instead, it should be released at night, or at dawn, dusk, or under cloudy weather, with 'a stable wind direction...so that the aerosol can float into the target area'.

Meanwhile, the research also notes that such an attack would result in a surge of patients requiring hospital treatment, which then 'could cause the enemy's medical system to collapse'.

Other concerns include China's 'Gain of Function' research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology - near where the first Covid outbreak was discovered - at which virologists are creating new viruses said to be more transmissible and more lethal.

MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: 'This document raises major concerns about the ambitions of some of those who advise the top party leadership. Even under the tightest controls these weapons are dangerous.'

Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said: 'China has thwarted all attempts to regulate and police its laboratories where such experimentation may have taken place.'

The revelation from the book What Really Happened in Wuhan was reported yesterday.

The document, New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, says: 'Following developments in other scientific fields, there have been major advances in the delivery of biological agents.

'For example, the new-found ability to freeze-dry micro-organisms has made it possible to store biological agents and aerosolise them during attacks.'

It has 18 authors who were working at 'high-risk' labs, analysts say.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings also raised concerns over China's biological research into coronaviruses potentially being weaponised in future.

'There is no clear distinction for research capability because whether it's used offensively or defensively is not a decision these scientists would take,' he said.

'If you are building skills ostensibly to protect your military from a biological attack, you're at the same time giving your military a capacity to use these weapons offensively. You can't separate the two.'

Intelligence agencies suspect Covid-19 may be the result of an inadvertent Wuhan lab leak. But as yet there is no evidence to suggest it was intentionally released.

Only this week, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro appeared to strongly criticise China by accusing it of creating Covid to spark a chemical 'warfare.'

The comments were made during a press conference on Wednesday as the hardline leader sought to further distance himself from the growing attacks over his domestic handling of a pandemic that has produced the second-highest death toll in the world.

'It's a new virus. Nobody knows whether it was born in a laboratory or because a human ate some animal they shouldn't have,' Bolsonaro said.

'But it is there. The military knows what chemical, bacteriological and radiological warfare. Are we not facing a new war? Which country has grown its GDP the most? I will not tell you.'

While Bolsonaro did not name China in his speech, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that China was the only G20 member whose GDP showed a growth during the pandemic in 2020, expanding by 2.3%.


And the World Health Organization chief said as recently as March that all theories on the origins of Covid-19 remained open after reading the WHO-China study – despite the claim the report dismissed the notion that the virus escaped from a lab as 'extremely unlikely'.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said all of the hypotheses are 'on the table' and require further investigation after reading the report from the international experts' mission to Wuhan.

But his comments came just hours after it emerged the report dismissed the lab leak theory and said the transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario.



The report's release was repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China.

Critics including ex-President Trump have accused the WHO of parroting Chinese propaganda on the virus since the outbreak was first announced to the world.

The comments by Dr Tedros came after New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin slammed China for 'covering up to the world the pandemic's origins', while the WHO 'has played along time and time again'.

Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, revealed he has 'concerns' over the WHO's controversial fact-finding mission.

Repeated delays in the report's release raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions.

'We've got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,' U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview.

China rejected that criticism and accused the US of 'exerting political pressure' on the fact-finding mission experts.

'The US has been speaking out on the report. By doing this, isn't the U.S. trying to exert political pressure on the members of the WHO expert group?' asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

China 'preparing for WW3 with biological weapons for last six years'

The dossier by People's Liberation Army scientists and health officials examined the manipulation of diseases to make weapons 'in a way never seen before'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

They are experts in producing lies and spreading them worldwide, same was done against Iraq in name of WMDs.

 

[Peace be there]

for fcuk sake stop doing politics over a pandemic, the virus is not lab-made its been debunked a million times.

Yes it has been debunked by Pakistani and Chinese scientists on pdf lol

 

[hualushui]

 

[baqai]

and USA has been looking into bio and space warfare for ages because .........

 

[bshifter]

India being totally irresponsible must be forced to pay financial compensation. Western Media has been covering what's going on there and are very critical of Modi why he allowed mass gatherings.

 

[denel]

China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons


China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons - including coronavirus - SIX years ago, according to dossier produced by the People's Liberation Army in 2015 and uncovered by the US State Department

• Beijing has considered the military potential of SARS coronaviruses since 2015
• The bombshell document was accessed by US State Department investigators
• Scientists examined manipulation of diseases 'in a way never seen before'
• Foreign affairs committee's Tom Tugendhat says evidence is a 'major concern'

Chinese scientists have been preparing for a Third World War fought with biological and genetic weapons including coronavirus for the last six years, according to a document obtained by US investigators.

The bombshell paper, accessed by the US State Department, insists they will be 'the core weapon for victory' in such a conflict, even outlining the perfect conditions to release a bioweapon, and documenting the impact it would have on 'the enemy's medical system'.

This latest evidence that Beijing considered the military potential of SARS coronaviruses from as early as 2015 has also raised fresh fears over the cause of Covid-19, with some officials still believing the virus could have escaped from a Chinese lab.


The dossier by People's Liberation Army scientists and health officials, details of which were reported in The Australian, examined the manipulation of diseases to make weapons 'in a way never seen before'.

Senior government figures say it 'raises major concerns' over the intentions of those close to Chinese President Xi Jinping amid growing fears about the country's lack of regulation over its activity in laboratories.


The authors of the document insist that a third world war 'will be biological', unlike the first two wars which were described as chemical and nuclear respectively.

Referencing research which suggested the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced them to surrender, and bringing about the end of WWII, they claim bioweapons will be 'the core weapon for victory' in a third world war.

The document also outlines the ideal conditions to release a bioweapon and cause maximum damage.

The scientists say such attacks should not be carried out in the middle of a clear day, as intense sunlight can damage the pathogens, while rain or snow can affect the aerosol particles.

Instead, it should be released at night, or at dawn, dusk, or under cloudy weather, with 'a stable wind direction...so that the aerosol can float into the target area'.

Meanwhile, the research also notes that such an attack would result in a surge of patients requiring hospital treatment, which then 'could cause the enemy's medical system to collapse'.

Other concerns include China's 'Gain of Function' research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology - near where the first Covid outbreak was discovered - at which virologists are creating new viruses said to be more transmissible and more lethal.

MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: 'This document raises major concerns about the ambitions of some of those who advise the top party leadership. Even under the tightest controls these weapons are dangerous.'

Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said: 'China has thwarted all attempts to regulate and police its laboratories where such experimentation may have taken place.'

The revelation from the book What Really Happened in Wuhan was reported yesterday.

The document, New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, says: 'Following developments in other scientific fields, there have been major advances in the delivery of biological agents.

'For example, the new-found ability to freeze-dry micro-organisms has made it possible to store biological agents and aerosolise them during attacks.'

It has 18 authors who were working at 'high-risk' labs, analysts say.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings also raised concerns over China's biological research into coronaviruses potentially being weaponised in future.

'There is no clear distinction for research capability because whether it's used offensively or defensively is not a decision these scientists would take,' he said.

'If you are building skills ostensibly to protect your military from a biological attack, you're at the same time giving your military a capacity to use these weapons offensively. You can't separate the two.'

Intelligence agencies suspect Covid-19 may be the result of an inadvertent Wuhan lab leak. But as yet there is no evidence to suggest it was intentionally released.

Only this week, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro appeared to strongly criticise China by accusing it of creating Covid to spark a chemical 'warfare.'

The comments were made during a press conference on Wednesday as the hardline leader sought to further distance himself from the growing attacks over his domestic handling of a pandemic that has produced the second-highest death toll in the world.

'It's a new virus. Nobody knows whether it was born in a laboratory or because a human ate some animal they shouldn't have,' Bolsonaro said.

'But it is there. The military knows what chemical, bacteriological and radiological warfare. Are we not facing a new war? Which country has grown its GDP the most? I will not tell you.'

While Bolsonaro did not name China in his speech, data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that China was the only G20 member whose GDP showed a growth during the pandemic in 2020, expanding by 2.3%.


And the World Health Organization chief said as recently as March that all theories on the origins of Covid-19 remained open after reading the WHO-China study – despite the claim the report dismissed the notion that the virus escaped from a lab as 'extremely unlikely'.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said all of the hypotheses are 'on the table' and require further investigation after reading the report from the international experts' mission to Wuhan.

But his comments came just hours after it emerged the report dismissed the lab leak theory and said the transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario.



The report's release was repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China.

Critics including ex-President Trump have accused the WHO of parroting Chinese propaganda on the virus since the outbreak was first announced to the world.

The comments by Dr Tedros came after New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin slammed China for 'covering up to the world the pandemic's origins', while the WHO 'has played along time and time again'.

Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical adviser, revealed he has 'concerns' over the WHO's controversial fact-finding mission.

Repeated delays in the report's release raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions.

'We've got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,' U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview.

China rejected that criticism and accused the US of 'exerting political pressure' on the fact-finding mission experts.

'The US has been speaking out on the report. By doing this, isn't the U.S. trying to exert political pressure on the members of the WHO expert group?' asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

China 'preparing for WW3 with biological weapons for last six years'

The dossier by People's Liberation Army scientists and health officials examined the manipulation of diseases to make weapons 'in a way never seen before'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

The communists have yanked thousands of papers already from their archives already.



NEWS
15 APRIL 2020

China is tightening its grip on coronavirus research
Some scientists welcome government vetting because it could stop poor-quality COVID-19 papers being published – others fear it is an attempt to control information.

• Andrew Silver &
• David Cyranoski
• 
  

Download PDF

Research from China is crucial to understanding the COVID-19 pandemic.Credit: Xinhua News Agency/Shutterstock
China’s government has started asserting tight control over COVID-19 research findings. Over the past two months, it appears to have quietly introduced policies that require scientists to get approval to publish — or publicize — their results, according to documents seen by Nature and some researchers.
This fits with media reports that at least two Chinese universities have posted notices online stating that research on the virus’s origins needs to be approved by the university’s academic committee and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) or Ministry of Education (MOE) before being submitted for publication.
Scientists in China say the changes are probably a response to poor-quality studies on the virus, which have been posted online and reported widely — and several welcome them. But some academics have suggested that the policies are part of China’s attempt to control information about the start of the outbreak.


Is the coronavirus airborne? Experts can’t agree
Awareness of the new rules is mixed among researchers working on the virus in China. Some scientists who spoke to Nature say they heard about the vetting process from their institutions, but others were in the dark. The ministries seem not to have posted notices about the policies on their websites, and they have not yet responded to Nature’s attempts to confirm that they have released the documents.
Researchers outside the country are concerned that the vetting process could delay publication of important insights that could help to control the pandemic. Some also fear that the Chinese government is interfering in the scientific review process.
“Researchers and research institutions should be free to share knowledge without oversight in general, provided it has been conducted according to our current ethical conventions and standards,” says Ashley St. John, a virologist at the Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore. “Where there is a review or vetting process in place, it should be only scientific in nature.”
Last month, China’s foreign-ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, made sensational claims that the virus might have come to the country from the United States, prompting concerns that the Chinese government’s statements were not always guided by science. Although the exact origin of the virus is unknown, researchers think it probably came from bats and then spread to a carrier animal before infecting the first people somewhere in central China late last year.
Paper trail
Government oversight of COVID-19 research seems to have started with a directive to universities. A document obtained by Nature that seems to be from the MOE, and is dated 10 March, orders institutions to get approval from the ministry and the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, run by the powerful State Council, before publicly announcing results on the origin of the SARS-COV-2 virus, its transmission routes or treatments or vaccines. The document states that universities need to consider “the questions society is concerned about” when publicizing research on the virus. (Nature was sent the document, which is stamped by the MOE and includes the name of an agency official, by a researcher who did not want to comment.)


Coronavirus and COVID-19: Keep up to date
The education ministry seems to have issued another order after a meeting of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism on 25 March, according to a second notice that also appears to come from the MOE and has been posted on Pincong, a Chinese-language forum. This notice, dated 7 April, states that studies on the virus’s source must be approved by a university academic committee and the education ministry’s science and technology department before being published in a journal or posted on a preprint server or blog. Academic committees must evaluate all other COVID-19 papers for “academic value and timing”, the notice states. It also warns that studies must not exaggerate the efficacy of vaccines or treatments.
According to archived web pages, the 7 April notice was reproduced on the website of the School of Information Science and Technology at Fudan University in Shanghai, but was subsequently removed. UK newspaper The Observer has reported that a similar notice was posted on, and then removed from, the website of the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan.
Helpful policies
Several researchers in China think the vetting process for COVID-19 studies is a good idea. Alice Hughes, a conservation biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, says the measure will stop the dissemination of potentially inaccurate and sensationalist research, such as a controversial study published in the Journal of Medical Virology on 22 January, which suggested that snakes were the virus’s host. Scientists criticized the study for its lack of evidence, but it still received widespread media coverage.
Hughes says her institute’s director told her in late February that research on COVID-19 required MOST approval. She has not seen official policy documents herself. In early March, she says, she had a paper approved by the CAS, and then by MOST within 72 hours.


Coronavirus can infect cats — dogs, not so much
Hughes hasn’t noticed any major effects on research publications. “We are continuing to see China publishing papers on the origins through this system,” she says.
Zhang Zhigang, an evolutionary microbiologist at Yunnan University in Kunming who published on the outbreak’s origins before the vetting process came in, also thinks it’s a good way to control research quality and reliability. Poor-quality research could hurt global efforts to fight the virus, he says.
But news of the policies hasn’t reached all scientists. Chen Jin-Ping, an animal-disease researcher at the Guangdong Institute of Applied Biological Resources in Guangzhou who is also studying the virus’s origins, says he hasn’t been told that he needs ministry approval for his research to be published.
Even some institutions seem to be in the dark. Fei Ma, dean of research and graduate studies at Xi’An Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, says he hasn’t heard of the need for coronavirus-related research to be approved by MOST or other government agencies.
Denis Simon, executive vice-chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, says his institute hasn’t received any official notices that coronavirus research needs ministry approval, but researchers are discussing it. “People have heard about this but nothing has arrived on our doorstep,” he says.
Delay concerns
Some researchers outside China fear the vetting process could hold up the release of important research. “Right now we desperately need all kinds of research relating to SARS-CoV-2, from basic studies to understand mechanisms of disease to vaccines and therapeutics,” says St. John. “We can’t afford any delays right now.”


Should scientists infect healthy people with the coronavirus to test vaccines?
Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 could also lead to early-warning systems for future virus spillovers from animals to people, she says.
Sarah Cobey, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Chicago in Illinois, adds that it would be very problematic if results from China were being filtered or suppressed for reasons other than quality. Observations of viral spread across countries inform the use of interventions such as social distancing, she says.
“If the research presents a biased picture, much of the record can eventually be corrected through studies of SARS-CoV-2 elsewhere,” she says, “but the distortion and delay would probably come at the cost of human health.”

China is tightening its grip on coronavirus research

Some scientists welcome government vetting because it could stop poor-quality COVID-19 papers being published – others fear it is an attempt to control information.

www.nature.com

China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic
To push the idea that the virus didn’t come from China, the government has misrepresented experts’ remarks and given dubious theories the veneer of science.

• 
  

A barricade in April in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus emerged, meant to keep people out of a residential compound.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Javier C. Hernández
Published Dec. 6, 2020Updated Jan. 14, 2021
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
The mild-mannered German scientist never anticipated becoming a Chinese propaganda star.
But Alexander Kekulé, the director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research in Halle, Germany, has been all over the state-run media in China in recent days. News outlets have taken Dr. Kekulé’s research out of context to suggest that Italy, not China, is where the coronavirus pandemic began. Photos of him have appeared on Chinese news sites under headlines reading, “China is innocent!”
Dr. Kekulé, who has repeatedly said that he believes the virus first emerged in China, was startled. “This is pure propaganda,” he said in an interview.
Facing global anger over their initial mishandling of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities are now trying to rewrite the narrative of the pandemic by pushing theories that the virus originated outside China.
In recent days, Chinese officials have said that packaged food from overseas might have initially brought the virus to China. Scientists have released a paper positing that the pandemic could have started in India. The state news media has published false stories misrepresenting foreign experts, including Dr. Kekulé and officials at the World Health Organization, as having said the coronavirus came from elsewhere.
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Continue reading the main story


The campaign seems to reflect anxiety within the ruling Communist Party about the continuing damage to China’s international reputation brought by the pandemic. Western officials have criticized Beijing for trying to conceal the outbreak when it first erupted.
The party also appears eager to muddy the waters as the World Health Organization begins an investigation into the question of how the virus jumped from animals to humans, a critical inquiry that experts say is the best hope to avoid another pandemic. China, which has greatly expanded its influence in the W.H.O. in recent years, has tightly controlled the effort by designating Chinese scientists to lead key parts of the investigation.

Image

A Wuhan market in late January, just after the city was locked down. China has been criticized for initially trying to conceal the outbreak.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By spreading theories that foreigners are responsible for the pandemic, the party is deploying a well-worn playbook. The Chinese government is rarely willing to publicly address its own shortcomings, often preferring to redirect attention elsewhere and rally the country against a common enemy.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has led a vigorous effort this year to play down his government’s early failures in the crisis, instead arguing that the party’s success in containing the virus shows the superiority of its authoritarian system.
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Continue reading the main story


The latest propaganda push gives Mr. Xi a fresh chance to stoke nationalist sentiment and distract from festering problems, including a lingering wealth gap. The government seems wary of inviting renewed scrutiny of its actions as the pandemic began to unfold, analysts say.

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Mr. Xi most likely sees the party’s missteps as a vulnerability and is eager to avoid potential challenges to his authority at home, said Erin Baggott Carter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California. “If Xi is able to escape blame for the coronavirus, that reduces one major source of discontent with his rule,” she said.
In some ways, China’s strategy resembles efforts by American lawmakers to distract from missteps in that country by spreading fringe theories, including the unsubstantiated notion that the Chinese government manufactured the virus as a biological weapon.
For months, Chinese officials openly spread conspiracy theories of their own, implying at one point that the United States military could have brought the virus to the city of Wuhan. Experts and officials are now going further, trying to give falsehoods about the origins of the virus the veneer of scientific fact.
A recent paper by a group of scientists affiliated with the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences indicated that the virus could have broken out in India before spreading to China. “Wuhan is not the place where human-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission first happened,” said the paper, which appeared last month on SSRN, an online scholarly repository. The paper, which was not peer-reviewed, had been submitted to The Lancet, a medical journal, for publication.
Teens Are in Crisis. So Are Their Parents.

Image

Grocery shopping in Beijing. One theory Chinese officials have promoted is that imported frozen food brought the virus to China.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
After drawing wide attention in the Chinese news media and in overseas outlets, the 22-page article vanished from online sites. A spokeswoman for The Lancet said it had been removed from SSRN at the request of the paper’s authors. The scientists did not respond to requests for comment.
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Continue reading the main story


The article was the latest in a series of comments and articles by Chinese scientists arguing that the virus had first surfaced in Italy, Spain or elsewhere before spreading to China.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Latest Updates
Updated
May 9, 2021, 3:07 p.m. ET2 hours ago
2 hours ago

• Fauci says indoor mask guidance should ‘start being more liberal’ as more Americans get vaccinated.
• Turkey’s second major wave has begun to recede, though its lockdown is far from tight.
• Some U.S. families are not eager to send their children back to school.

Is this helpful?

While recent studies have indicated that the coronavirus may have infected people in the United States and elsewhere earlier than previously thought, researchers still believe the most likely explanation is that it started circulating in China.
Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who has studied the coronavirus, said the idea that the virus originated outside China seemed to be gaining traction for political purposes. “It lacks scientific credibility and will only further fuel the conspiracy theories,” he said.
As part of their efforts to redirect attention toward other countries, Chinese scholars and officials have in recent weeks revived another unproven theory: that frozen food packages from abroad brought the virus to China. Chinese officials say they have detected the virus on pork from Germany, shrimp from Ecuador, salmon from Norway and other products.
While the World Health Organization says the probability of becoming infected from coming into contact with food and food packaging is low, Chinese officials have doubled down on the theory.
“More and more evidence suggests that the frozen seafood or meat products probably spread the virus from countries with the epidemic into our country,” Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent interview posted on a government website.

Image

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has argued that its eventual success in containing the virus shows the superiority of its authoritarian system.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Even if the virus could spread through frozen goods, experts say packaged food alone cannot explain why the first major outbreak took place in Wuhan.
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Continue reading the main story


As it seeks to push its theories on the global stage, the Chinese government has distorted comments from foreign experts to falsely suggest that there is broad consensus that the virus first surfaced outside China.
Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director, spoke recently about the need for a rigorous investigation into how the virus spread from animals to humans. “We need to start where we found the first cases and that is in Wuhan in China,” Dr. Ryan said at a news conference late last month in Geneva.
But in China, the government framed Dr. Ryan’s remarks differently. The news media falsely claimed that he had said the virus existed around the world but happened to be discovered in Wuhan.
Dr. Ryan was more explicit a few days later, saying the idea that the virus originated outside China was “highly speculative.” Official news outlets in China did not report that remark.
When Dr. Kekulé, the German scientist, appeared on a television news show last month to discuss the pandemic, he made a point of saying that it was clear the virus had first emerged in China. During the interview, he also criticized European officials for taking too long to detect the virus, saying it enabled Covid-19 to spread across the globe.

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Continue reading the main story


Chinese news outlets seized on the latter remarks. “He noted that for a global pandemic, the starting shot was fired in northern Italy,” said a report by China Global Television Network, an international arm of the official Chinese state broadcaster.
Dr. Kekulé, who has written a book about the pandemic, was distraught and set out to correct the record, going on German television again to say he had been misquoted.
“China uses everything for propaganda,” Dr. Kekulé said in an interview. “I started to realize that I had to do something about it.”
But Dr. Kekulé’s efforts were largely in vain. Video clips of his remarks about Europe had already spread widely on the Chinese internet. Thousands of people were sharing state media articles about his research, leaving comments such as, “A billion people in China thank you!” and “There are not many scientists who dare tell the truth.”
A simple phrase appeared in red writing above Dr. Kekulé’s face in a meme that circulated online: “Not Wuhan.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting. Albee Zhang contributed research.

China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic (Published 2020)

To push the idea that the virus didn’t come from China, the government has misrepresented experts’ remarks and given dubious theories the veneer of science.

www.nytimes.com

No ‘negative’ news: How China censored the coronavirus

Officials scrambled to suppress inconvenient news and reclaim the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

www.japantimes.co.jp

 

[fallstuff]

The communists have yanked thousands of papers already from their archives already.



NEWS
15 APRIL 2020

China is tightening its grip on coronavirus research
Some scientists welcome government vetting because it could stop poor-quality COVID-19 papers being published – others fear it is an attempt to control information.

• Andrew Silver &
• David Cyranoski
• 
  

Download PDF

Research from China is crucial to understanding the COVID-19 pandemic.Credit: Xinhua News Agency/Shutterstock
China’s government has started asserting tight control over COVID-19 research findings. Over the past two months, it appears to have quietly introduced policies that require scientists to get approval to publish — or publicize — their results, according to documents seen by Nature and some researchers.
This fits with media reports that at least two Chinese universities have posted notices online stating that research on the virus’s origins needs to be approved by the university’s academic committee and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) or Ministry of Education (MOE) before being submitted for publication.
Scientists in China say the changes are probably a response to poor-quality studies on the virus, which have been posted online and reported widely — and several welcome them. But some academics have suggested that the policies are part of China’s attempt to control information about the start of the outbreak.


Is the coronavirus airborne? Experts can’t agree
Awareness of the new rules is mixed among researchers working on the virus in China. Some scientists who spoke to Nature say they heard about the vetting process from their institutions, but others were in the dark. The ministries seem not to have posted notices about the policies on their websites, and they have not yet responded to Nature’s attempts to confirm that they have released the documents.
Researchers outside the country are concerned that the vetting process could delay publication of important insights that could help to control the pandemic. Some also fear that the Chinese government is interfering in the scientific review process.
“Researchers and research institutions should be free to share knowledge without oversight in general, provided it has been conducted according to our current ethical conventions and standards,” says Ashley St. John, a virologist at the Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore. “Where there is a review or vetting process in place, it should be only scientific in nature.”
Last month, China’s foreign-ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, made sensational claims that the virus might have come to the country from the United States, prompting concerns that the Chinese government’s statements were not always guided by science. Although the exact origin of the virus is unknown, researchers think it probably came from bats and then spread to a carrier animal before infecting the first people somewhere in central China late last year.
Paper trail
Government oversight of COVID-19 research seems to have started with a directive to universities. A document obtained by Nature that seems to be from the MOE, and is dated 10 March, orders institutions to get approval from the ministry and the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, run by the powerful State Council, before publicly announcing results on the origin of the SARS-COV-2 virus, its transmission routes or treatments or vaccines. The document states that universities need to consider “the questions society is concerned about” when publicizing research on the virus. (Nature was sent the document, which is stamped by the MOE and includes the name of an agency official, by a researcher who did not want to comment.)


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The education ministry seems to have issued another order after a meeting of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism on 25 March, according to a second notice that also appears to come from the MOE and has been posted on Pincong, a Chinese-language forum. This notice, dated 7 April, states that studies on the virus’s source must be approved by a university academic committee and the education ministry’s science and technology department before being published in a journal or posted on a preprint server or blog. Academic committees must evaluate all other COVID-19 papers for “academic value and timing”, the notice states. It also warns that studies must not exaggerate the efficacy of vaccines or treatments.
According to archived web pages, the 7 April notice was reproduced on the website of the School of Information Science and Technology at Fudan University in Shanghai, but was subsequently removed. UK newspaper The Observer has reported that a similar notice was posted on, and then removed from, the website of the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan.
Helpful policies
Several researchers in China think the vetting process for COVID-19 studies is a good idea. Alice Hughes, a conservation biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, says the measure will stop the dissemination of potentially inaccurate and sensationalist research, such as a controversial study published in the Journal of Medical Virology on 22 January, which suggested that snakes were the virus’s host. Scientists criticized the study for its lack of evidence, but it still received widespread media coverage.
Hughes says her institute’s director told her in late February that research on COVID-19 required MOST approval. She has not seen official policy documents herself. In early March, she says, she had a paper approved by the CAS, and then by MOST within 72 hours.


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Hughes hasn’t noticed any major effects on research publications. “We are continuing to see China publishing papers on the origins through this system,” she says.
Zhang Zhigang, an evolutionary microbiologist at Yunnan University in Kunming who published on the outbreak’s origins before the vetting process came in, also thinks it’s a good way to control research quality and reliability. Poor-quality research could hurt global efforts to fight the virus, he says.
But news of the policies hasn’t reached all scientists. Chen Jin-Ping, an animal-disease researcher at the Guangdong Institute of Applied Biological Resources in Guangzhou who is also studying the virus’s origins, says he hasn’t been told that he needs ministry approval for his research to be published.
Even some institutions seem to be in the dark. Fei Ma, dean of research and graduate studies at Xi’An Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, says he hasn’t heard of the need for coronavirus-related research to be approved by MOST or other government agencies.
Denis Simon, executive vice-chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, says his institute hasn’t received any official notices that coronavirus research needs ministry approval, but researchers are discussing it. “People have heard about this but nothing has arrived on our doorstep,” he says.
Delay concerns
Some researchers outside China fear the vetting process could hold up the release of important research. “Right now we desperately need all kinds of research relating to SARS-CoV-2, from basic studies to understand mechanisms of disease to vaccines and therapeutics,” says St. John. “We can’t afford any delays right now.”


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Understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 could also lead to early-warning systems for future virus spillovers from animals to people, she says.
Sarah Cobey, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Chicago in Illinois, adds that it would be very problematic if results from China were being filtered or suppressed for reasons other than quality. Observations of viral spread across countries inform the use of interventions such as social distancing, she says.
“If the research presents a biased picture, much of the record can eventually be corrected through studies of SARS-CoV-2 elsewhere,” she says, “but the distortion and delay would probably come at the cost of human health.”

China is tightening its grip on coronavirus research

Some scientists welcome government vetting because it could stop poor-quality COVID-19 papers being published – others fear it is an attempt to control information.

www.nature.com

China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic
To push the idea that the virus didn’t come from China, the government has misrepresented experts’ remarks and given dubious theories the veneer of science.

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A barricade in April in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus emerged, meant to keep people out of a residential compound.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Javier C. Hernández
Published Dec. 6, 2020Updated Jan. 14, 2021
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
The mild-mannered German scientist never anticipated becoming a Chinese propaganda star.
But Alexander Kekulé, the director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research in Halle, Germany, has been all over the state-run media in China in recent days. News outlets have taken Dr. Kekulé’s research out of context to suggest that Italy, not China, is where the coronavirus pandemic began. Photos of him have appeared on Chinese news sites under headlines reading, “China is innocent!”
Dr. Kekulé, who has repeatedly said that he believes the virus first emerged in China, was startled. “This is pure propaganda,” he said in an interview.
Facing global anger over their initial mishandling of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities are now trying to rewrite the narrative of the pandemic by pushing theories that the virus originated outside China.
In recent days, Chinese officials have said that packaged food from overseas might have initially brought the virus to China. Scientists have released a paper positing that the pandemic could have started in India. The state news media has published false stories misrepresenting foreign experts, including Dr. Kekulé and officials at the World Health Organization, as having said the coronavirus came from elsewhere.
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The campaign seems to reflect anxiety within the ruling Communist Party about the continuing damage to China’s international reputation brought by the pandemic. Western officials have criticized Beijing for trying to conceal the outbreak when it first erupted.
The party also appears eager to muddy the waters as the World Health Organization begins an investigation into the question of how the virus jumped from animals to humans, a critical inquiry that experts say is the best hope to avoid another pandemic. China, which has greatly expanded its influence in the W.H.O. in recent years, has tightly controlled the effort by designating Chinese scientists to lead key parts of the investigation.

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A Wuhan market in late January, just after the city was locked down. China has been criticized for initially trying to conceal the outbreak.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By spreading theories that foreigners are responsible for the pandemic, the party is deploying a well-worn playbook. The Chinese government is rarely willing to publicly address its own shortcomings, often preferring to redirect attention elsewhere and rally the country against a common enemy.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has led a vigorous effort this year to play down his government’s early failures in the crisis, instead arguing that the party’s success in containing the virus shows the superiority of its authoritarian system.
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The latest propaganda push gives Mr. Xi a fresh chance to stoke nationalist sentiment and distract from festering problems, including a lingering wealth gap. The government seems wary of inviting renewed scrutiny of its actions as the pandemic began to unfold, analysts say.

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Mr. Xi most likely sees the party’s missteps as a vulnerability and is eager to avoid potential challenges to his authority at home, said Erin Baggott Carter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California. “If Xi is able to escape blame for the coronavirus, that reduces one major source of discontent with his rule,” she said.
In some ways, China’s strategy resembles efforts by American lawmakers to distract from missteps in that country by spreading fringe theories, including the unsubstantiated notion that the Chinese government manufactured the virus as a biological weapon.
For months, Chinese officials openly spread conspiracy theories of their own, implying at one point that the United States military could have brought the virus to the city of Wuhan. Experts and officials are now going further, trying to give falsehoods about the origins of the virus the veneer of scientific fact.
A recent paper by a group of scientists affiliated with the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences indicated that the virus could have broken out in India before spreading to China. “Wuhan is not the place where human-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission first happened,” said the paper, which appeared last month on SSRN, an online scholarly repository. The paper, which was not peer-reviewed, had been submitted to The Lancet, a medical journal, for publication.
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Grocery shopping in Beijing. One theory Chinese officials have promoted is that imported frozen food brought the virus to China.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
After drawing wide attention in the Chinese news media and in overseas outlets, the 22-page article vanished from online sites. A spokeswoman for The Lancet said it had been removed from SSRN at the request of the paper’s authors. The scientists did not respond to requests for comment.
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The article was the latest in a series of comments and articles by Chinese scientists arguing that the virus had first surfaced in Italy, Spain or elsewhere before spreading to China.
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While recent studies have indicated that the coronavirus may have infected people in the United States and elsewhere earlier than previously thought, researchers still believe the most likely explanation is that it started circulating in China.
Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who has studied the coronavirus, said the idea that the virus originated outside China seemed to be gaining traction for political purposes. “It lacks scientific credibility and will only further fuel the conspiracy theories,” he said.
As part of their efforts to redirect attention toward other countries, Chinese scholars and officials have in recent weeks revived another unproven theory: that frozen food packages from abroad brought the virus to China. Chinese officials say they have detected the virus on pork from Germany, shrimp from Ecuador, salmon from Norway and other products.
While the World Health Organization says the probability of becoming infected from coming into contact with food and food packaging is low, Chinese officials have doubled down on the theory.
“More and more evidence suggests that the frozen seafood or meat products probably spread the virus from countries with the epidemic into our country,” Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent interview posted on a government website.

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Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has argued that its eventual success in containing the virus shows the superiority of its authoritarian system.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Even if the virus could spread through frozen goods, experts say packaged food alone cannot explain why the first major outbreak took place in Wuhan.
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As it seeks to push its theories on the global stage, the Chinese government has distorted comments from foreign experts to falsely suggest that there is broad consensus that the virus first surfaced outside China.
Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director, spoke recently about the need for a rigorous investigation into how the virus spread from animals to humans. “We need to start where we found the first cases and that is in Wuhan in China,” Dr. Ryan said at a news conference late last month in Geneva.
But in China, the government framed Dr. Ryan’s remarks differently. The news media falsely claimed that he had said the virus existed around the world but happened to be discovered in Wuhan.
Dr. Ryan was more explicit a few days later, saying the idea that the virus originated outside China was “highly speculative.” Official news outlets in China did not report that remark.
When Dr. Kekulé, the German scientist, appeared on a television news show last month to discuss the pandemic, he made a point of saying that it was clear the virus had first emerged in China. During the interview, he also criticized European officials for taking too long to detect the virus, saying it enabled Covid-19 to spread across the globe.

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Chinese news outlets seized on the latter remarks. “He noted that for a global pandemic, the starting shot was fired in northern Italy,” said a report by China Global Television Network, an international arm of the official Chinese state broadcaster.
Dr. Kekulé, who has written a book about the pandemic, was distraught and set out to correct the record, going on German television again to say he had been misquoted.
“China uses everything for propaganda,” Dr. Kekulé said in an interview. “I started to realize that I had to do something about it.”
But Dr. Kekulé’s efforts were largely in vain. Video clips of his remarks about Europe had already spread widely on the Chinese internet. Thousands of people were sharing state media articles about his research, leaving comments such as, “A billion people in China thank you!” and “There are not many scientists who dare tell the truth.”
A simple phrase appeared in red writing above Dr. Kekulé’s face in a meme that circulated online: “Not Wuhan.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting. Albee Zhang contributed research.

China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic (Published 2020)

To push the idea that the virus didn’t come from China, the government has misrepresented experts’ remarks and given dubious theories the veneer of science.

www.nytimes.com

No ‘negative’ news: How China censored the coronavirus

Officials scrambled to suppress inconvenient news and reclaim the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

www.japantimes.co.jp

Quite a bit of information, food for thought.

 

[rambro]

USA have a nasty habit of accusing others of what they themselves do.