The US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, asked the authorities of the Asian giant on Tuesday to be “more honest” about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, thus continuing the recent confrontation between the two countries after the renewed scrutiny of what was the that unleashed the first outbreak of infections in Wuhan.
“We are the two largest economies. We are the two most powerful countries in the world. We have to be able to work together,” Burns said. during an event of the International Platform for Security, Commerce and the Economy of the United States Chamber of Commerce, The Hill news portal reported.
During a speech, apparently focused on climate change, the US diplomat took advantage of the occasion to, with the aim of “strengthen” the World Health Organization (WHO), “put pressure on China to be more active and, of course, more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan.”
With these statements, Burns joins the current exchange of accusations between Washington and Beijing after a study by the US Department of Energy determined, albeit “with low confidence”, that the coronavirus pandemic originated after an accident in a Chinese laboratory.
For his part, The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, yesterday demanded that the US authorities stop “slandering China” and “politicizing” the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Along the same lines, the Asian giant claimed its total willingness to collaborate with different countries in investigations into the coronavirus, whose pandemic began in December 2019 in China and already in January 2020 spread throughout the world, causing the death of millions. of people.
