CHINA has raged that the Wuhan lab Covid leak probe will be like the "US finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" and warned the West faces its "Waterloo".
An editorial published by Communist Party-run Global Times claims the American government is "full of arrogance" and blasts the theory that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan.
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The attack comes after Joe Biden last week announced a review of the Covid lab leak theory.
The US president said the intelligence community will "redouble their efforts" to discover the origins of the Covid outbreak and report back to him within 90 days.
China hit back at the announcement, with foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian saying Biden is not interested in "serious" scientific origin tracing and doesn't care about "facts or truth".
Zhao also called for the US to open up its labs for investigation.
The latest Global Times editorial, which was published yesterday, adds that it is not realistic to have a "definitive conclusion" into the origins of the virus in 90 days.
'POLITICAL INTERESTS'
Addressing previous reports and studies by the World Health Organisation, the piece says "US intelligence agencies do not have superior research capability than the WHO."
It also accuses the American government of "playing political games to hijack science" by demanding that the WHO should "serve the political interests of the US".
In one paragraph, the Chinese newspaper – which is often seen as the unfiltered voice of the Communist Party – compares the latest Covid probe to the Iraq War.
In March 2003, US forces invaded Iraq vowing to destroy WMDs and end the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein.
President Bush announced: "These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign."
But one year later, David Kay, the former top US weapons inspector, told Congress: "We were almost all wrong."
A report in March 2005 found no evidence of WMDs as prewar intelligence appeared to have been mistaken.
The Global Times article, which accuses America of running an "anti-China campaign", says: "What they will get in the end is nothing but political."
It adds that tracing the origins of the pandemic is complex and says the US just assumes the Wuhan Institute of Virology is guilty of leaking the virus.
The state newspaper also accuses US intelligence agencies of having lost their credibility and "fabricating lies for political purposes".
The article warns the US is trying to blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic, but it might lose its credibility by "abusing its soft power".
As new claims into the origins of the coronavirus emerge, authorities are on the hunt for a Chinese woman, known as "Patient Su", who may have been the first Covid case infected by a potential lab leak of the virus in Wuhan.
It is claimed the 61-year-old woman contracted a mystery condition in November – around one month before China reported the outbreak to the World Health Organisation.
Reports also revealed that British intelligence officials are recruiting Chinese whistleblowers on the dark web over fears Covid leaked from the infamous Wuhan lab.
British intelligence has reportedly assessed the theory recently and upgraded its likeliness from "remote" to "feasible", reports The Sunday Times.
The dark web – the shadowy underbelly of the internet – allows Chinese sources to share secrets without fears of being caught by the Communist Party.
Last month, we reported on fears that China is using millions of fake accounts on Facebook to try and spread Covid misinformation through its state media.
It is an operation which may have inflated the Communist Party pages to be some of the most "popular" on the social media platform.
Experts told The Sun Online these astonishing numbers of followers are likely heavily inflated by mass mobilisations of bot accounts to boost the pages to try give them more reach in the West.
Tom Tugdenhat MP said Facebook was allowing China to spread its propaganda, while Tobias Ellwood MP demanded the platform has a "duty to act" in combatting Chinese misinformation.
Facebook assured The Sun Online it takes down any "harmful misinformation" spread by the publications – and defended their place on the platform as they are "clearly labelled" as state media.
All of the pages have also grown rapidly over the last few months as they picked up millions more followers, according to monitoring site Socialbakers.
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