The Politics of Coronavirus - Is this the frightening truth!
“The Chinese – they have so many scientists, it’s unreal. What we can do in six months, they can do in a month. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that I can see from my side that they would benefit from us in terms of knowledge, in terms of re-agents,” Kobinger said. “They have better access to pathogens, everything else, the vaccine, therapies, everything.”
On June 13, 2012, a 60-year-old Saudi man was admitted to a private hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a 7-day history of fever, cough, expectoration, and shortness of breath. He had no history of cardiopulmonary or renal disease, was receiving no long-term medications, and did not smoke.
Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki isolated and identified a previously unknown coronavirus from his lungs. After routine diagnostics failed to identify the causative agent, Zaki contacted Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for advice.
Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki isolated and identified a previously unknown coronavirus from his lungs. After routine diagnostics failed to identify the causative agent, Zaki contacted Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for advice.
Electron microscopic image of Coronovirus belonging to the family of the virus to the common cold and SARS found in the Middle East.
Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki. Fouchier used a broad-spectrum “pan-coronavirus” real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans.
This Coronavirus sample was acquired by Scientific Director Dr. Frank Plummer of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg directly from Fouchier, who received it from Zaki. This virus was reportedly stolen from the Canadian lab by Chinese agents.
The Canadian Lab
Coronavirus arrived at Canada’s NML Winnipeg facility on May 4, 2013, from the Dutch lab. The Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.
The research was done in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national lab, the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases which is housed in the same complex as the National Microbiology Laboratory.
NML has a long history of offering comprehensive testing services for coronaviruses. It isolated and provided the first genome sequence of the SARS coronavirus and identified another coronavirus NL63 in 2004.
This Winnipeg based Canadian lab was targeted by Chinese agents in what could be termed as Biological Espionage.
Canadian lab - The Canadian Science center for Human and Animal Health in Arlington street, Winnipeg Canada
Chinese Biological Espionage
In March 2019, in the mysterious event, a shipment of exceptionally virulent viruses from Canada’s NML ended up in China. The event caused a major scandal with Bio-warfare experts questioning why Canada was sending lethal viruses to China. Scientists from NML said the highly lethal viruses were a potential bio-weapon.
The NML scientist who was escorted out of the Canadian lab along with her husband, another biologist and members of her research team is believed to be a Chinese Bio-Warfare agent Xiangguo Qiu. Qiu was the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section in the Special Pathogens Program at Canada’s NML.
But a shift took place, somehow. Since 2006, she has been studying powerful viruses in Canada’s NML. The viruses shipped from the NML to China were studied by her in 2014, for instance (together with the viruses Machupo, Junin, Rift Valley Fever, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, and Hendra).
Infiltrating the Canadian Lab
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu is married to another Chinese scientist – Dr. Keding Cheng, also affiliated with the NML, specifically the “Science and Technology Core”. Dr. Cheng is primarily a bacteriologist who shifted to virology. The couple is responsible for infiltrating Canada’s NML with many Chinese agents as students from a range of Chinese scientific facilities directly tied to China’s Biological Warfare Program, namely:
- Institute of Military Veterinary, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun
- Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu Military Region
- Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei
- Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
Dr.-Xiangguo-Qiu-Chinese-Biological-Scientist working at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada
All of the above four mentioned Chinese Biological Warfare facilities collaborated with Dr. Xiangguo Qiu within the context of the Ebola virus, the Institute of Military Veterinary joined a study on the Rift Valley fever virus too, while the Institute of Microbiology joined a study on Marburg virus. Noticeably, the drug used in the latter study – Favipiravir – has been earlier tested successfully by the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, with the designation JK-05 (originally a Japanese patent registered in China already in 2006), against Ebola and additional viruses.
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu also collaborated in 2018 with three scientists from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Maryland, studying post-exposure immunotherapy for two Ebola viruses and the Marburg virus in monkeys; a study supported by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The Wuhan Coronavirus
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu made at least five trips over the school year 2017-18 to the above mentioned Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which was certified for BSL4 in January 2017. Moreover, in August 2017, the National Health Commission of China approved research activities involving Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses at the Wuhan facility.
The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is housed at the Chinese military facility Wuhan Institute of Virology linked to China’s Biological Warfare Program. It was the first-ever lab in the country designed to meet biosafety-level-4 (BSL-4) standards – the highest biohazard level, meaning that it would be qualified to handle the most dangerous pathogens.
Sources say Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were escorted from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg on July 5, 2019. Since then, the University of Manitoba has ended their appointments, reassigned her graduate students, and cautioned staff, students and faculty about traveling to China. (Governor General’s Innovation Awards)
Coronavirus Bioweapon
The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses in the past, including the strain that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue. Researchers at the institute also studied the germ that causes anthrax – a biological agent once developed in Russia.
Huanan Sea Food market is located about 20 miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology which is the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak.
“Coronaviruses (particularly SARS) have been studied in the institute and are probably held therein,” said Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biowarfare. He said. “SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”
James Giordano, a neurology professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow in Biowarfare at the U.S. Special Operations Command, said China’s growing investment in bio-science, looser ethics around gene-editing and other cutting-edge technology and integration between government and academia raise the specter of such pathogens being weaponized.
That could mean an offensive agent, or a modified germ let loose by proxies, for which only China has the treatment or vaccine. “This is not warfare, per se,” he said. “But what it’s doing is leveraging the capability to act as a global savior, which then creates various levels of macro and microeconomic and bio-power dependencies.”
China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences actually developed an Ebola drug – called JK-05 — but little has been divulged about it or the defense facility’s possession of the virus, prompting speculation its Ebola cells are part of China’s bio-warfare arsenal, Shoham told the National Post.
Weaponizing Biotech
China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion has highlighted biology as a priority, and the People’s Liberation Army could be at the forefront of expanding and exploiting this knowledge.
The PLA is pursuing military applications for biology and looking into promising intersections with other disciplines, including brain science, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. Since 2016, the Central Military Commission has funded projects on military brain science, advanced biomimetic systems, biological and biomimetic materials, human performance enhancement, and “new concept” biotechnology.
In 2016, an AMMS doctoral researcher published a dissertation, “Research on the Evaluation of Human Performance Enhancement Technology,” which characterized CRISPR-Cas as one of three primary technologies that might boost troops’ combat effectiveness. The supporting research looked at the effectiveness of the drug Modafinil, which has applications in cognitive enhancement; and at transcranial magnetic stimulation, a type of brain stimulation, while also contending that the “great potential” of CRISPR-Cas as a “military deterrence technology in which China should “grasp the initiative” in development.
In 2016, the potential strategic value of genetic information led the Chinese government to launch the National Genebank, which intends to become the world’s largest repository of such data. It aims to “develop and utilize China’s valuable genetic resources, safeguard national security in bioinformatics, and enhance China’s capability to seize the strategic commanding heights” in the domain of Biotechnology Warfare.
Chinese military’s interest in biology as an emerging domain of warfare is guided by strategists who talk about potential “genetic weapons” and the possibility of a “bloodless victory.”
Ebola is classified as a “category A” bioterrorism agent by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning it could be easily transmitted from person to person, would result in high death rates and “might cause panic.” The CDC lists Nipah as a category C substance, a deadly emerging pathogen that could be engineered for mass dissemination.
China’s Biological Warfare Program is believed to be in an advanced stage that includes research and development, production and weaponization capabilities. Its current inventory is believed to include the full range of traditional chemical and biological agents with a wide variety of delivery systems including artillery rockets, aerial bombs, sprayers, and short-range ballistic missiles.
China’s Biological Warfare Program
In a 2015 academic paper, Shoham – of Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies – asserts that more than 40 Chinese facilities are involved in bio-weapon production
In January 2018, the lab was operational ‘for global experiments on BSL-4 pathogens,’ wrote Guizhen Wu in the journal Biosafety and Health. ‘After a laboratory leak incident of SARS in 2004, the former Ministry of Health of China initiated the construction of preservation laboratories for high-level pathogens such as SARS, coronavirus, and pandemic influenza virus,’ wrote Guizhen Wu.
Coincidentally, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is located only 20 miles away from the Huanan Seafood Market which is the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak dubbed the Wuhan Coronavirus.
However, the studies by Dr. Qiu are considerably more advanced and apparently vital for the Chinese biological weapons development in case Coronavirus, Ebola, Nipah, Marburg or Rift Valley fever viruses are included therein.
The Canadian investigation is ongoing and questions remain whether previous shipments to China of other viruses or other essential preparations, took place from 2006 to 2018, one way or another.
Xiangguo Qiu is an outstanding Chinese scientist born in Tianjin. She primarily received her medical doctor degree from Hebei Medical University in China in 1985 and came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. Later on, she was affiliated with the Institute of Cell Biology and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, not engaged with studying pathogens.
Following an investigation, the incident was traced to Chinese agents working at NML. Four months later in July 2019, a group of Chinese virologists was forcibly dispatched from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML). The NML is Canada’s only level-4 facility and one of only a few in North America equipped to handle the world’s deadliest diseases, including Ebola, SARS, Coronavirus, etc.
History of Biological Warfare Programme
A combination of past and present geostrategic factors distinctly affect the Chinese approaches and outlooks with regard to Biological Warfare. The first major factor is the relapsing Japanese Biological Warfare attacks against and human Biological Warfare experimenting on Chinese populations, which took place from 1933 to 1945, killing and injuring tens of thousands, without the Chinese being able to cope or retaliate.
The employment of Biological Warfare against the Chinese by the Japanese military had a long-lasting impact in China. The Chinese official news agency, Xinhua, reported in 2002, that ‘at least 270,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were slaughtered by Japanese germ-warfare troops between 1933 and 1945’, according to an ‘in-depth study by Chinese and Japanese scholars.’
The second factor is the Chinese belief (whether sound or unsound) that the United States (US) conducted Biological Warfare offensive operations in China (and North Korea) during the Korean War (1950–53), alongside with the evident fact that between 1950 and 1972, the US possessed an operational Biological Warfare arsenal.
The third factor concerns the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Allegedly, near the end of World War II, USSR conducted experiments with plague, anthrax, and cholera in Soviet-occupied Mongolia. Later on, tests with various vaccines were conducted by the USSR in Mongolia for a long period of time, concomitantly with the persisting communist brotherhood between China and USSR and their strategic cooperation in general, and Chinese awareness and following (to a certain extent) of the colossal Biological Warfare program run by the USSR in particular.
A comprehensive study of the aspects pertaining to those geostrategic factors was published in 1999—entitled China and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Implications for the United States—within the framework of a conference sponsored by the US National Intelligence Council and Federal Research Division.
Collectively, these solidly formed Chinese perspectives shaped the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) approaches and outlooks pertaining to Biological Warfare, and yielded, naturally, a wide Chinese Biological Warfare Program which still persists fully viably—if appreciably concealed—and comprises both defensive and offensive sub-programs. Often located and working conjunctively, each of the two sub-programs, however, constitutes a strategically distinct entity.
Biological Weapons Convention
China joined the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1984, 12 years after the Convention was opened for signature by the international community. From 1998 to 2009, two waves expressing China’s declared attitude to the BWC can be observed.
The first one, from 1998 to 2002, was apparently a result of increasing accusations made by the US in regard to an ongoing offensive Biological Warfare Program conducted by Beijing. Unsurprisingly, the first wave China generated within that context begin with a ‘Joint Statement on Biological Weapons Convention’, issued by Presidents Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton during the Sino-US summit meeting that took place in China in June 1998, as follows:
Recognizing the threat posed by biological and toxin weapons, the United States and China reaffirm their strong support for the complete global elimination of biological weapons. As States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention, the two sides stress the importance of the Convention to international peace and security, fully support the purposes and objectives of the Convention, and favor comprehensively strengthening the effectiveness and universality of the Convention.
Various further steps were taken by China, so as to manifest a supportive—if not entirely favorable—attitude towards the BWC. In its 17 October 2002 announcement on the promulgation of ‘Regulations on Export Control of Dual-use Biological Agents and Related Equipment and Technologies’, China stated that it ‘has never developed, produced or stockpiled any biological weapons, and never assisted any country to acquire or develop these weapons.’
The second wave coincides with the period 2006 to 2009, widely accentuated by Chinese diplomacy with respect to the BWC. Once again, so it seems, this was in response to accumulating American accusations regarding an ongoing Biological Warfare Program run by China.
All States Parties should make full use of the Convention as an important platform to strengthen cooperation and communication, promote implementation and other capacities of the Convention. China believes that adopting effective national implementation measures in accordance with the Convention and respective national situations constitutes basic obligations for the States Parties, as well as the important prerequisite and guarantee for effective implementation of all articles of the Convention.
China observes in good faith its obligations under the BWC and supports the multilateral efforts aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of the Convention. China has actively participated in the meetings of the parties to the Convention and the meetings of experts in a pragmatic manner. China has already established a comprehensive legislation system for the implementation of the Convention, set up a national implementation focal point, and submitted its declarations regarding confidence-building measures to the Implementation Support Unit of the Convention in a timely fashion.
In 2009, China accentuated its approach concerning Article X of the BWC, noting, ‘All provisions including Article X of the Convention are equally important and should be fully implemented. To strengthen international cooperation helps improve the implementation capability of States Parties, promote the effectiveness of the Convention and finally enhance the universalization of the Convention.’
China also referred, in 2009, to the aspect of tackling the spread of hazardous infectious diseases as being closely related to the objectives of the BWC: ‘Information about any outbreak of acute infectious diseases should be shared in accordance with the current practice of relevant international organizations.’
The SARS Epidemic
Although the latter constitutes a self-evident rule for long, the opposite conduct was exhibited by China from November 2002—when a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic broke out in the country—till February 2003, when China reported it for the first time to the World Health Organization (WHO), disclosing the seriously threatening event (the causative virus spread from China to 37 countries) during three months.
China declared that there is only one biohazard installation with maximal safety level (P4) throughout the country, although this is doubtful. Uniquely, across China, and officially, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the sole facility that is equipped with such a biohazard measure, furnished by a French supplier. The Institute investigates highly virulent viruses, such as SARS14, influenza H5N115, Japanese encephalitis16, and dengue. Besides this, the germ causing anthrax is studied at the Institute too (which is beyond the discipline of virology).
During the last five years, China has reiterated various BWC aspects and declarations it had previously mentioned, as described. All in all, its diplomacy regarding the BWC is consistent and noticeably in favor of the Convention. And yet, it stands in contradiction to China’s Biological Warfare Program, which is both defensive and offensive.
At any rate, China legitimately adheres, outwardly, to the requirements posed by the BWC in terms of defensive profile and biosecurity implementation. The relevance and characteristics of those aspects in relation to China have been discussed in detail, fairly professionally, by senior Chinese scientists within two notable reviews, forming, nevertheless, a screen of vagueness over the core components of China’s Biological Warfare Program, especially those dealing with bio-weaponry.
Rise of China’s Biological Warfare Program
During the Korean War (1950–53), the earliest semblance of routinized defense against Biological Warfare in the PLA was the 1952 sanitation/anti-plague units, formed through the involvement of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in Korea. At the same time, intensive educational campaigns to rid disease-carrying pests were conducted, combined with the experience of supposed Biological Warfare casualties treated during the Korean War.
Consequently, in 1954, PLA delegations and students visited the USSR for training in microbiology and infectious diseases. Officially, China declared that its BWs defense program was initiated in 1958. It was based on a network of anti-plague stationery and mobile facilities (similar to the Soviet one), aiming to cope with the plague and further hazardous infectious diseases.
The defensive program had considerably been evolving during the 1960s, while an offensive Biological Warfare program was initiated in conjunction. By the mid-1970s, a comprehensive, orderly defensive alignment had been already operating within China’s Biological Warfare Program, while an effective offensive BW program was run concurrently.
The latter was formed as an outcome of the influential geostrategic factors mentioned earlier, yet, presumably, was no less a result of an innate Chinese will to possess an arm of high strategic value, in terms of sub-nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such a motive seems to typically reside in the Chinese national outlook regarding nearly any advanced weaponry.
China acceded to the BWC in 1984, but in a report entitled Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control Agreements, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency contended: ‘China maintained an offensive biological weapons program throughout the 1980s. The program included the development, production, stockpiling or other acquisition or maintenance of biological warfare agents.’
The Pentagon also published a similar paper, entitled ‘Proliferation: Threat and Response’, which claimed that China’s Biological Warfare Program includes the manufacturing of infectious microorganisms and toxins. In 1993, US intelligence officials stated that it was highly probable that China had an active and expanding offensive BWs program, following an assessment that two civilian-run biological research centers were actually controlled by the Chinese military.
The research centers were known to have engaged previously in the production and storage of BW. The American suspicions intensified in 1991 when one of the suspected biological centers was enlarged. Suspicions heightened further after Beijing made, according to a US official, a ‘patently false’ declaration to the United Nations (UN) that it had never made any germ weapons or conducted any work to bolster defenses against a biological attack.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry subsequently described all this as groundless, denying that China had a germ weapons program. In 1995, President Clinton transmitted to the US Congress his statutory annual report, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control Agreements. On China, it said:
‘[T]here are strong indications that China probably maintains its offensive BW program.’ In its Chemical and Biological Defense Program Annual Report and the Chemical and Biological Defense Program Performance Plan for 2001, the US Department of Defense was even more specific, contending: ‘China possesses the munitions production capabilities necessary to develop, produce and weaponize biological agents’.
Convening a hearing on China’s proliferation practices in 2003, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was informed as follows:
The US believes that despite being a member of the Biological Weapons Convention, China maintains a BW program in violation of its BWC obligations. The United States believes that China’s consistent claims that it has never researched, produced or possessed BW are simply not true and that China still retains its BW program.
Although China has submitted its voluntary annual BWC confidence-building measure (CBM) data declarations every year, the US Department of State assessed in 2005 that the information submitted therein continued to be ‘inaccurate and misleading’. Further, ‘BWC CBMs since 1991 have called on the States Parties to declare, among other things, their past offensive activities, which China has not done. On the contrary, China insists it never had such a program at all.’
Likewise, in 2007, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) testimony for the US Senate, the Select Committee on Intelligence, entitled ‘Current and Projected National Security Threats’ (in both open and closed sessions), contended that the DIA believes China ‘continues to maintain some elements of an offensive biological weapons program.’
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA and intelligence agencies in other countries most probably continue to carefully follow and monitor China’s Biological Warfare Program. Irrespective of publicly bringing out their findings—if partially—or totally keeping them, Beijing’s BWP entirely persists in all likelihood. It is assumed that it includes an extremely secretive operational, sizable BW arsenal, extremely hidden, which is steadily being upgraded.
All inputs based on different sources - reader may have their opinions.