Months before controversy surrounded Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in gain-of-function virus research, a Chinese professor put the COVID-19 pandemic in a frightening light.

Chen Ping, a senior research fellow at Fudan University’s Center for New Political Economy, called COVID-19 a bioweapon.

“In 2020, China won the trade war, science and technology war, and especially the biological war,” Chen said in January. “The achievement is unprecedented. This is an epoch-making historical record. So for the liberal, America-worshiping cult within China, their worship of the U.S. is actually unfounded. After this trade war and biological warfare, the U.S. was beaten back to its original shape.”

Chen made a point to contrast those perceived victories with President Donald Trump’s policies.

“So I think Trump’s attempt to restore the declining international status of the U.S. during his four years has failed,” Chen said. “This failure is not only the failure of Trump’s personal campaign for re-election as president, but also the failure of the neo-liberalism-led globalization of the past four decades led by the U.S. and the U.K. Therefore, the development and modernization model of the U.S. and Europe is not worthy of China’s imitation and repetition.”

Chen’s remarks, made for domestic consumption, reflect China’s strategy to become dominant in the world by sabotaging the United States.

“We Need To Do a Good Job”

Jin Canrong, associate dean of Renmin University’s School of International Studies and an advisor to China’s Communist Party, described the basic goal at a conference in Guangzhou in 2016.

“We do not need to talk to Americans directly about surpassing the United Kingdom and catching up with the United States,” Jin said. “In fact, there is a standard official answer to this, and it is called the realization of two hundred-year goals. This is the goal of the national rejuvenation set by the 18th National Congress.”

“The task of our next generation is to put the U.S. under our jurisdiction/management, too. But the premise is that we need to do a good job in our generation.”

COVID-19 fits the strategy of overwhelming the United States on all fronts.

“We first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes,” Jin said. “Second, we should make it as busy as possible, to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.”

The Smoking Gun?

In 2015, a year before Jin’s speech, the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese health officials published, “The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons.”

That study discussed coronaviruses as part of a “new era in genetic weapons” that can be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before,” it stated.

The study addressed the best way to unleash viral bioweapons so they can cause the greatest amount of damage and panic. Bioweapons “could cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse” and “cause acute and chronic psychological and mental illnesses, such as acute stress reactions,” the study reported.

The editor in chief, Xu Dezhong, led a group from China’s Ministry of Health that analyzed the SARS outbreak in 2003. Xu regularly reported to the Communist Party’s Central Committee during the outbreak.

The Truth Is Out There

But for the past three months, a high-ranking Chinese defector has been giving American intelligence valuable information about COVID-19.

Dong Jingwei, a former vice minister for state security, provided proof that COVID-19 was man-made and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reported RedState’s Jennifer Van Laar. Dong also confirmed a report from another defector, Dr. Yan Li-Meng, that the PLA ran the institute.

Yan, an expert in virology and immunology, worked at the Hong Kong Institute of Public Health before coming to the United States in April. Yan left family and friends behind, and said she never expects to see them again.

“Technical details provided by the defector, RedState is told, were given to scientists (who were not told how that information was given to the government) who then re-analyzed data from published sources in conjunction with the new data and concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered,” Van Laar wrote. “And, the defector was able to confirm numerous non-public details Yan provided the U.S. government.” (Parentheses in original.)

Dong gave the Defense Intelligence Agency initial studies of the pathogen, models predicting its spread and destructive capability, and financial records showing which organizations and foreign governments funded research not only on coronavirus but also other potential bioweapons.

Fauci Implicated

Dong’s information could implicate Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institutes of Health. Both agencies combined to give $4.57 million in taxpayer funds to the Wuhan institute for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” Fauci’s NIAID contributed $3.75 million, with the remaining $826,277 coming from the NIH.

Those funds went to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization not affiliated with any government. That group channeled them to the institute. EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Peter Daszak, described the work at a professional conference in 2016.

“We sequenced the spike protein, the protein that attaches to cells,” Daszak said. “My colleagues in China did the work. When you get a (genetic) sequence, and it looks like a relative of a known nasty pathogen, then you create pseudo-particles. You insert the spike proteins from those viruses and see if they bind to human cells.”

“You end up with a small number of viruses that really do look like killers. You look at the people in the region that live where this animal lives and say, ‘Do we see antibodies specific to that virus?’”

Pandemic Partners

Daszak’s colleagues included Zhou Yusen, a military scientist who received decorations from the People’s Liberation Army. Before he died under mysterious circumstances, Zhou applied for a vaccine patent in February 2020 through the Institute of Military Medicine, run by the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences.

Another colleague was Dr. Shi Zhengli, who directs the institute’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Shi received the nickname “Bat Woman” for her work on bat coronaviruses. In November 2019, Shi and Zhou wrote a research paper on antibody development for the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Virology, thanks to funding from the NIH.

“National security sources said the ties between Zhou and Dr. Shi ­supported claims by U.S. intelligence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was engaged in ‘secret military activity,'” wrote Sharri Markson, who broke the story for The Australian.

For Van Laar, the implications are obvious.

“Pause for a moment and consider this,” she wrote. “Our government now has additional evidence that a virus that killed 600,000 Americans, sickened millions more, nearly destroyed our economy, and inflicted untold collateral damage was a bioweapon created by the Chinese military and deliberately released.”

If true, that makes Fauci and his American colleagues out to be fools — at the very least.

 

Joseph D’Hippolito has written commentaries for such outlets as the Jerusalem Post, the American Thinker and Front Page Magazine. He works as a free-lance writer.