Source: South China Morning Post    Published: 2021-08-09

Full Report at: http://en.rdcy.org/indexen/index/news_cont/id/689344.html

A group of Chinese think tanks have accused the United States of being the worst in the world at handling the pandemic and revived Covid-19 origin conspiracy theories as Beijing tries to shift the focus of the hunt for the disease’s origins beyond China.

In a joint report released on Monday, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, the Taihe Institute and the Intellisia Institute said they aimed to reveal “the truth about America’s fight against Covid-19”.

The document draws mainly from reports and critiques in the US media to say the US was a “failed country” and a “suspected source of the outbreak”.

It concludes by renewing Chinese foreign ministry calls for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19 in the US, linking it to the 2019 closure of a US military lab and to the white-tailed deer in Maryland.

Chongyang Institute director Wang Wen said he was angered by the US not accepting responsibility in the pandemic, adding that the report was “not meant to engage in a war of words with the US” but to reflect on past failings to gain lessons for future pandemic response.

“The US got the gold at the Olympics that just concluded, but the US is not first in its pandemic response, and is the complete opposite,” he said.

“Objective facts and the reality have shown that the US is the world’s number one in its pandemic failure, political blame, spreading the pandemic, political division, currency abuse, pandemic turmoil, disinformation and in origin-tracing terrorism.”

Beijing has stepped up its attacks on the US over the pandemic and its insistence that the World Health Organization investigate US facilities in the next phase of its origin-tracing process. It was published ahead of the results of an ongoing inquiry by US intelligence agencies examining whether Covid-19 originated from an animal source or a laboratory accident in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The results are expected within the next two weeks.

As tension escalated between the major powers, both sides have exchanged barbs over their culpability in the pandemic, with Washington raising questions about China’s lack of transparency in the initial outbreak and Beijing accusing the US of shifting blame for its domestic response to Beijing.

The Chinese think tanks’ report – “America Ranked First?!’: The Truth about America’s fight against Covid-19” – was particularly critical of the Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking that assessed how countries handled the virus “with the least social and economic disruption”.

The ranking said the US was the “best place to be in the Covid-19 era” in June, but surging cases from the Delta variant of the virus dropped the US to fifth place in July.

At a panel session after the report’s release, British commentator Martin Jacques said the suggestion that the US was the best in its pandemic response was “the most absurd proposal I think I’ve seen” and William Jones, a Washington policy analyst and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, said it was “absolutely ludicrous”.

Wei Nanzhi, deputy director of the department of American society at culture at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US Covid-19 crisis had made her consider fundamental problems with US society, culture and its system of governance.

“These pandemic failures have made us reflect on whether we should doubt the truthfulness and representativeness of US democracy,” she said.

The report outlined missteps reported in US media in the US government’s response to Covid-19, worsening disparity between the rich and the poor, racial conflict in the US and even gun violence.

It speculated whether the WHO was pressured by the US to continue investigating the origins of Covid-19 and often took an emotional tone in lines such as “What is the US government hiding?” and “Covid-19 has been hijacked by partisan politics!”

Some parts also appeared hastily put together, with US President Joe Biden’s title misspelled at one point and most of the citations accessed in the first week of August.

Organisers said around 150 journalists, scholars and businesspeople were invited to the launch of the report. Diplomats from countries including Iran, Pakistan, Russia and the Netherlands also attended.

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