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BEIJING: On Monday, May 4, China’s state-owned CCTV television station attacked the “crazy and evasive comments” of the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, fueling even more Sino-American tensions.
Pompeo said Sunday that “enormous evidence” showed that the virus originated in a laboratory in China, doubling previous claims that have been repeatedly denied by the World Health Organization and various scientific experts.
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READ: United States Says ‘Huge Evidence’ Shows Coronavirus Came From China’s Laboratory
READ: WHO says no evidence of coronavirus was made in a lab: China
The theory has been strongly pushed by the Trump administration, which has increasingly criticized China’s handling of the outbreak that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Since then, the virus has killed more than 247,000 people, and 3.5 million have been infected worldwide.
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Titled “Evil Pompeo is spewing pointless poison and spreading lies,” the harshly worded comment quoted WHO Executive Director Mike Ryan and Columbia University virologist W Ian Lipkin, who claimed the virus is naturally occurring and It was not created by man nor was it leaked from a laboratory.
“These imperfect and unreasonable comments from American politicians make it clear to more and more people that there is no ‘evidence’,” the comment said.
“The so-called ‘Wuhan laboratory leaked virus’ is a complete and utter lie. American politicians are quick to shift blame, deceive the votes, and suppress China when their own internal efforts against the epidemic are a disaster.”
Two other comments published Monday by the state newspaper People’s Daily attacked Pompeo and former White House strategist Steve Bannon as a “pair of lying clowns,” and criticized Bannon as a “living fossil of the Cold War.”
Bannon said last week on a US far-right talk show that China had committed a “biological Chernobyl” against the United States and defended the theory that the virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, echoing the recent rhetoric from the White House.
READ: COVID-19: Pompeo pressures China to provide access to Wuhan laboratories
Last week, CCTV repeatedly criticized Pompeo as “humanity’s common enemy” and accused him of “spreading a political virus” for his repeated claims that the pandemic originated in a laboratory.
China and the USA USA They have repeatedly exchanged comments on the virus’s origins in a growing war of words, after Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian in March promoted the conspiracy theory that the US military. USA He may have brought the virus to China.
Since then, the two superpowers have accused each other of spreading misinformation, as the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has also attacked China for his alleged lack of transparency.
Last week, Trump claimed to have evidence that the Wuhan Virology Institute was the source, and appeared to echo speculation fueled by right-wing U.S. radio commentators about a secret laboratory.
US news reports say Trump has commissioned American spies to discover more about the virus’s origins as it makes China’s handling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign for the November presidential election.
Most scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans after emerging in China, possibly from a market in Wuhan that sells exotic animals for meat.
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