Biden and Xi relationship could be further strained by lab leak report

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A bombshell Department of Energy report expected to conclude that COVID-19 was likelier to have originated in a lab than other scenarios could strain the relationship between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Relations between the two nations and their respective leaders have been fraying for years, with the DOE report being the latest tear in the fabric.

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“The origin of the novel coronavirus is a scientific issue and should not be politicized,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters Monday, repeating a line the nation’s leaders have used repeatedly when discussing the origins of the virus.

The DOE, apparently acting on new information, changed its stance on the virus from neutral to believing with “low confidence” that a lab leak is the pandemic’s most likely origin. The Energy Department joins the FBI in its conclusion, while four other agencies believe COVID-19 is most likely derived from natural transmission. Two agencies, including the CIA, haven’t reached a firm conclusion, per the report.

But the report made a big splash in Washington, where Republicans in particular called for greater action from the Biden administration.

“For years, Anthony Fauci and Biden officials called this a conspiracy,” tweeted Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Republican strategist John Feehery pointed to the “entire left-wing culture class” for covering up any discussion of the lab leak.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-TX) called on the White House to concur with the DOE’s conclusion and “hold the CCP accountable.”

“I have requested a full and thorough briefing from the [Biden] administration on this report and the evidence behind it,” McCaul said in a statement.

Administration officials defended Biden during Monday’s White House press briefing.

National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said Biden prioritized discovering the virus’s origins upon taking office and that the president pressed Xi on it when the pair met in Bali.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered a hearty defense of former National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci, who has argued in support of a natural origin to the pandemic and faced his own accusations of origins obstruction.

Both she and Kirby emphasized there is no consensus over the issue. Nonetheless, the incident is likely to further strain U.S.-China relations, which have worn thinner since the beginning of this month.

A Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over the U.S. on Feb. 1 and shot down three days later, leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a diplomatic trip to Beijing.

Blinked later said China offered “no apology” for the surveillance balloon.

Chinese officials have argued in the past that COVID-19 started in the U.S., while Biden has largely kept the Trump-era tariffs on the country in place.

China came up against last week amid reports that it was considering sending lethal aid to Russia for its war against Ukraine.

Biden himself weighed in with a warning for Xi.

“I had a long conversation with Xi about this in the summer,” Biden said Friday. “And I said, ‘Look, this is not a threat. It’s just a statement. When, in fact, Europeans saw what was happening, and Americans saw what’s happening in Russia — in Europe, guess what? Six hundred corporations pulled out. They left.'”

Any perception that China was helping Russia could lead to a major loss of investment from the Western world, Biden added.

“I’d just keep an eye on that,” he said.

Andrew Noymer, a University of California, Irvine, public health professor, cautioned that the lab leak theory typically refers to a lab accident, not a deliberate release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Nonetheless, he has questioned if the balloon incident played a role in the timing of the new DOE report.

Questions have also been asked, including by a reporter at Monday’s press briefing, about gain-of-function research done at the Wuhan lab and its funding from U.S. grants. Noymer said there could be some soft diplomacy advantage to collaborating with China on research, which would also be lost if it ceases.

“It has been speculated that the reason we’re giving China grants is to give ourselves some leverage in order to figure to what they’re up to,” he said. “If we’re not partnering with them at all, then there’s no reason for them to share anything.”

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Chinese officials have not cooperated with efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, which means it may never be definitely known how the virus started. But the DOE report represents a marked shift in the thinking of the U.S. government.

“The direction is pointing towards the lab leak in this latest estimate,” Noymer said. “It’s not saying the compass needle could point anywhere. It’s saying it points toward a lab leak, but we’re not sure. I think that’s a significant development.”

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