China, US spar over origin of coronavirus
A Chinese government campaign to cast doubt on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic is fuelling a row with the US, with a Beijing official promoting conspiracy theories and Washington calling it the "Wuhan virus".
The spat comes as China tries to deflect blame for the contagion and reframe itself as a country that took decisive steps to buy the world time by placing huge swathes of its population under quarantine.
With cases falling in China and soaring abroad, Beijing is now rejecting the widely held assessment that the city of Wuhan is the birthplace of the outbreak.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian went a step further on Thursday, saying on Twitter that "it might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan" -- without providing any evidence.
Dali Yang, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, said he believes Zhao was "tweeting in his official capacity".
Scientists, however, have long suspected that the virus jumped from an animal at the Wuhan market to a human before spreading globally.
The United States, meanwhile, has angered China by using language directly linking the virus to the country.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called it the "Wuhan virus", prompting Beijing to reject the term as "despicable" and "disrespecting science".
US President Donald Trump started a televised address to his nation on Wednesday by speaking about the outbreak "that started in China".
The language is "part of his dog-whistling politics," said Australian National University researcher Yun Jiang. Robert O'Brien, the US national security adviser, on Wednesday insisted that the virus originated in Wuhan.
Beijing called his remarks "extremely immoral and also irresponsible".
Jiang said that "by sowing doubts into people's mind about where the virus originated, they're trying to deflect part of the blame for the outbreak".
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