US-style COVID-19 origin tracing: political manipulation with no regard for facts

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China has attached great importance to identifying the origins of the virus. Upholding the spirit of science, China actively participated in the global origin-tracing work with an open attitude. With China’s proactive cooperation, WHO experts came to China twice for joint research on origin-tracing and achieved important results and scientific conclusion, which greatly facilitated origin-tracing work. China’s contribution has gained broad international recognition.

However, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, who had previously praised China's work in fighting the pandemic, suddenly re-embraced the "lab leak" theory and proposed to subject China to another round of investigation, to the surprise of the world. This statement by the WHO can hardly be considered as purely scientific, especially when overwhelming scientific evidence has confirmed that the Wuhan laboratory could not have transmitted the virus. In a climate of presumed guilt against China in some Western countries, it is clear that the WHO is not capable of carrying out scientific and honest origin-tracing work, and Tedros' inconsistent statements partly reflect the joint pressure from a few countries, led by the United States.

The return to multilateral diplomacy is seen as the biggest difference between the newly elected US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump. US allies have thus strongly welcomed Biden's election as a global resurgence of multilateralism, but it is easy to see that Biden has no intention of returning wholesale to multilateral international mechanisms, and that his return to them is highly selective. Whether it is the return to the Paris Agreement or to the WHO with full dues paid, the US' main aim is not to strengthen global cooperation to solve the global climate or health crises by providing international public goods. The US' return is driven by a clear purpose . It’s most immediate motivation is to prevent China from gaining leadership in relevant international organizations and thus having a louder voice in the international community due to its own absence. Thus, since its return to the WHO, the US has not shown any intention of solving this global health crisis, but has instead tried to scapegoat China.

At the time of the first phase of the WHO probe, Robert Redfield, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, relentlessly stressed the possibility that the virus had "escaped" from a lab in Wuhan. In a CNN interview broadcast on March 28, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concern about the involvement of Chinese officials in "assisting" the WHO to compile the report; US Health Secretary Xavier Becerra urged the WHO on May 25, almost two months after the release of the report, to ensure that the next phase of origin-tracing is "transparent", implying doubt over the credibility of the first-phase WHO report. It was under constant pressure from the US that Tedros has since been ambivalent and even recently expressed support for another investigation into China in total disregard of scientific considerations. Thus, the return of the US to the WHO is a sham, merely an opportunity to undermine China's influence in international affairs.

Some politicians in the US relentlessly advocate the "Wuhan laboratory leak" theory, which has further pushed up anti-intellectualism in American society. On July 13, a poll conducted by the Institute for Technology Metrics Policy and Politics, a US-based polling organization, showed that about half of the respondents believed that the novel coronavirus was "developed in a laboratory" and a quarter of the public was convinced that the Chinese government "intentionally" created the virus in a laboratory and "intentionally" released it. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believed that the Chinese government should pay for the damage caused by the pandemic. This is largely consistent with a previous poll conducted by Politico and Harvard University, in which more than half of the public believed that the virus came from a "Chinese lab leak".

In the context of the US' domestic failure to fight the pandemic, finding a scapegoat has become the best option for US politicians. Thus, although polls are often unrelated to science, and their results may even be closer to anti-intellectualism - Western politicians still see it as a no-brainer to follow them, which is why the Biden administration is so keen on the "Wuhan lab leak" theory and is pressuring the WHO to reopen the investigation.

Regardless of the perverse and anti-intellectual nature of the US insistence on the "Wuhan lab leak" theory, this is not the first time that the US has used political and economic influence to coerce the WHO. In fact, US power politics has been present throughout the history of the WHO. As part of the blueprint for the post-World War II capitalist world, the very idea of establishing the WHO was proposed by the US with the aim of consolidating US hegemony. Since its establishment in 1948, US pressure has been pervasive, from the WHO's financial budget to its organizational structure and the appointment of key personnel to key positions. The US attempt to make the WHO "America's" international health agency was the reason why the former Soviet Union and its allies withdrew from the multilateral organization in 1949.

Ironically, the decline of the WHO's leadership in global public health has also been attributable to the US. In the 1970s, the WHO came to be dominated by the majority of developing countries, marked by the adoption of the principles of the New International Economic Order by the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. In response, the US, by manipulating budgetary reforms, pushed the US-controlled World Bank to step in and take leadership of global health, and in many ways disrupted the global health landscape, making the WHO decline in authority and status.

To add insult to injury, the US' own global public health program, which is focused on US domestic electoral politics, is being implemented to the direct detriment of several of the WHO's long-term infectious disease control priorities, undermining the WHO's better-grounded long-term infectious disease prevention and control program, and thus undermining the WHO's credibility and effectiveness. In particular, the US prompted the WHO to revise the International Health Regulations in 2005, creating additional problems. For example, the new regulations severely restricted the WHO's data collection and enforcement powers for emerging infectious diseases, which left the WHO legally constrained and incapable of dealing with global pandemic outbreaks and epidemics like the novel coronavirus outbreak. Arguably, it is the US that has single-handedly limited the WHO's ability to respond, which is the main reason for the global spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Both Trump's divestment resolution and the Biden administration's "pseudo-multilateralism" have been further diminishing the WHO's credibility through political manipulation of the origin-tracing investigation. This clearly undermines the WHO's ideal of "health for all", which was set out at its inception in 1948 and formalized in the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978. For a global pandemic such as COVID-19, true multilateralism is "respect", respect for science. The Biden administration's "multilateralism" is nothing more than politicizing science under the banner of cooperation, thereby ignoring the facts to achieve its own ulterior political objectives.

Contributed by Qin Qian, Associate Professor of International Studies Faculty at School of International Relations & Public Affairs, Fudan University, and Luo Tianyu, Ph.D. at School of Social Science, Tsinghua University

Translated by Wu You