China issues rebuttal of 24 ‘lies’ by US on coronavirus

BEIJING: China has issued a lengthy rebuttal of what it said were 24 “preposterous allegations” by some leading US politicians over its handling of the new coronavirus outbreak.

A 30-page, 11,000-word article posted on the foreign ministry website on Saturday night repeated and expanded on the refutations made during foreign ministry press briefings, and began by invoking Abraham Lincoln, the 19th century US president: “As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time and fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

The article also cited media reports that said Americans had been infected with the virus before the first case was confirmed in Wuhan. There is no evidence to suggest that is the case.

Keen to quash US suggestions that the virus was deliberately created or somehow leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the article said that all evidence shows the virus is not man-made and that the institute is not capable of synthesising a new coronavirus. It also provided a timeline of how China had provided information to the international community in a “timely”, “open and transparent” manner to rebuke US suggestions that it had been slow to sound the alarm.

The article rejected Western criticism of Beijing’s handling of the case of Li Wenliang, a 34-yearold doctor who had tried to raise the alarm over the outbreak of the new virus in Wuhan. His death from Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, prompted an outpouring of rage and grief across China. It said Li was not a “whistle-blower” and he was never arrested, contrary to many Western reports.However, the article did not mention that Li was reprimanded by the police for “spreading rumours”. Though Li was later named among “martyrs” mourned by China, an investigation into his case also drew criticism online .