Joe Biden and his government have gone on the offensive in the cold war with Beijing. Days after the incident of the detection and downing of the Chinese spy balloon that appeared in North American airspace, Washington has launched a battery of accusations and incriminating theories against the eastern power in relation to its possible responsibility for the origin of the covid pandemic. ; his alleged “plans” to arm Russia in the Ukraine war and his alleged willingness to invade Taiwan. All said in less than a week. And with a common denominator: the US Administration itself admits that it still has no proof or certainty in any of the three matters.
FBI director Christopher Wray told Fox on Tuesday night that his department has long believed that the "most likely" origin of the covid was "an incident in a laboratory in Wuhan" in China. And he added: "We are talking about a possible leak in a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government that killed millions of Americans."
The serious statement, later made official through a tweet from the federal agency, came to reinforce the much less conclusive report that the Department of Energy had released over the weekend in a leak to The Wall Street Journal, another ultra-conservative outlet. Murdoch group. This study maintained the same thesis of the leak from the Wuhan laboratory, but was based on intelligence information classified as "low confidence", that is, highly uncertain.
Even so, and despite recognizing that most agencies of the Biden Administration and the rest of the world are inclined towards the thesis of natural causes or prefer not to pronounce themselves due to lack of data, all the major US media echoed the fragile report. of Energy. And different government spokespersons took advantage of its dissemination to blame Beijing for "lack of transparency" or "honesty" when investigating the primary cause of the pandemic.
In his interview with Fox, Wray was more direct in this regard, attributing to Beijing an attempt to obstruct Washington's investigations into the genesis of the covid: "It seems to me that the Chinese government," he said, "has been doing everything possible to frustrate and obfuscate that work, and that's unfortunate for everyone."
President Xi Jinping's team responded with more contempt than anger at the FBI chief's accusations. "Given the US intelligence community's poor track record of fraud and deception, the conclusions they draw do not have any credibility," said Chinese Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning. And she added: "We urge the US side to respect science and facts."
More furious was Beijing's response to CIA Director William Burns' earlier claim that "Chinese leadership is considering providing Russia with lethal weapons" to help bring Ukraine to its knees: an incrimination. that various senior officials and White House spokespersons reproduced over and over again... While acknowledging that they had no evidence that the Asian giant had taken decisive steps in that direction. This marks an important difference between these accusations and those that the US leveled against Russia before the invasion, in that case always based on movements of troops and equipment towards the border with the neighboring country.
“China,” Mao replied this time, “has been actively promoting peace talks and a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis. Washington has no right to point fingers at China-Russia relations, and we do not accept coercion."
Burns also said that Xi has ordered his army to be "ready to carry out a successful invasion" of Taiwan in 2027. The CIA chief specified that the operation is not safe, and even that Beijing has "doubts" based in the experience of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. In any case, the Chinese spokeswoman responded: “What exactly is the United States trying to achieve? I need to emphasize that the Taiwan issue is a purely internal Chinese affair."
Meanwhile, the newly created bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives of Congress to combat Chinese competition opened Tuesday night with an almost apocalyptic declaration. The president of the special body, Republican Mike Gallagher, called on the rest of the legislators to act urgently because "time is not on our side" in the face of Beijing's challenge. And the competition between the two powers is "an existential struggle over what life will be like" for the remainder of the century, he warned.
China obsesses the United States; It is, without a doubt, his number one enemy.
