A Just Response to Beijing’s COVID-19 Abuses

Excerpt

Nearly 18 months after word of a deadly new virus began leaking out of Wuhan, China, the Chinese government’s response remains fundamentally hostile to international cooperation and transparency. Despite hundreds of offers of assistance, polite diplomatic entreaties, and demands for access to data by governments and health authorities across the globe, the world still knows far too little about COVID-19’s origin. As in a Dali painting, the clocks have melted but time has not stood still.

China’s initial silencing and censoring of its doctors and scientists, followed by misinformation about COVID-19’s dangers—especially denials concerning the virus’s ability to be spread human-to-human, invisibly and asymptomatically—helped cost the world trillions of dollars and millions of lives.

Whether one believes COVID-19 originated in a zoonotic host, a bat cave, a frozen food shipment, or a Wuhan lab’s dangerous “dual-use” research supporting undeclared bioweapons programs, the world needs answers from the Chinese Communist Party. These are answers Beijing won’t provide unless it faces a high price for refusing.

David Asher is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Thomas DiNanno is an adjunct senior fellow at Hudson Institute. David Feith is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. Miles Yu is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at FDD. Follow Matt on Twitter @MatthewZweig1. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.