Shweta Desai
17 June 2021•Update: 17 June 2021
PARIS
If China agrees to probe into the origins of the coronavirus, the US could fabricate lies and rumors to seek evidence for conclusions it has already drawn in advance, China’s ambassador to France said Thursday.
In a wide-ranging interview with the French newspaper, L’Opinion, on the pandemic, US, Taiwan, tensions with the EU and Uyghur minorities, Lu Shaye said there is a striking similarity between the modus operandi used by Washington to start the war in Iraq in 2003 and the suggestion that China created the virus.
“The same process is being repeated ... of imposing an accusation based on the presumption of guilt, then applying pressure by instrumentalizing and misleading public opinion,” he said.
Lu Shaye urged that virology laboratories in the US be placed under international scrutiny.
China and the US have indulged in accusations suggesting that the virus, which has triggered a global pandemic, was concocted in a military lab as part of biological weapons experiments.
In an attempt to shift the narrative, Chinese authorities revived the claim that the virus came from a US army lab and there should be an international investigation into "breaches of containment" at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in the American state of Maryland.
Lu said it was pertinent to focus on that since the World Health Organization investigation ruled out the possibility of a leak from a Chinese laboratory but the theory of a lab-made virus is still valid.
On Taiwan, he blamed the US for “crossing the red line defined by China” by backing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which advocates independence and refutes the “one China” policy. “They (US) provoke us, but we show restraint. Otherwise, there would have been a war already.”
He warned the US and European powers not to interfere in China’s affairs and use the Taiwan issue to counter Beijing.
“Europeans should not follow the Americans and provoke China. I remind you that we have no room to back down. There is no question of Taiwan's independence,” Lu said.
He defended China’s aggressive style of diplomacy adopted by foreign diplomats known as “wolf-warriors,” saying the term has a positive meaning in China.
He said he was honored to be a “wolf warrior” because there are “many crazy hyenas attacking China.”
On tensions with western countries regarding reports of human rights violations of the Muslim Uyghur minority, Lu compared re-education camps and vocational training centers for the indoctrinated and extremists, similar to the deradicalization centers in the US, the UK or France for radical extremists.
