China warns US of a Cold War; dismisses allegations as ‘lies’ on coronavirus’s origin

The United States’s efforts to make China an offender on coronavirus may lead each nation’s relationship to “the brink of a new Cold War”, China’s foreign minster said Sunday, dismissing the allegations of US as “lies” while reiterating that Beijing was open to an international effort to find the virus’s source. AFP reported.

Cutting U.S stand over the pandemic and a Beijing’s move to fasten control over Hong Kong, Wang Yi said the United States had been infected by a “political virus” forcing data there to keep the China under attack.

“It has come to our attention that some political forces in the US are taking China-US relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War,” Wang told reporters during a press conference at China’s week-long annual parliamentary session.

“I call on the US to stop wasting time and stop wasting precious lives,” Wang said,

He said China was “open” to international cooperation to identify the source of the novel coronavirus, but pressed that any probe must be “free of political interference”.

“Some political figures in the US rush to label the virus and politicise its origins, stigmatising China,” Wang said.

Earlier, during the 73rd World Health Assembly, tensions between US and China had boiled over calls for investigations into source of the virus in China and the WHO’s COVID-19 pandemic response.

In scathing remarks, US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar blasted China and the WHO, NPR reports. “In an apparent attempt to conceal this outbreak, at least one member state made a mockery of their transparency obligations, with tremendous costs for the entire world,” Azar said. “We saw that WHO failed at its core mission of information sharing and transparency when member states do not act in good faith.”

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo who also seems skeptical of China’s role in spreading coronavirus had reiterated his allegations that Chinese leadership allowed its people to travel outside the country despite knowing the risk of the transmission of the coronavirus. Earlier, president trump had revealed his unwillingness to talk to  his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, voicing his displeasure at Beijing’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak which has caused the loss of over 300,000 lives.

Trump who has been pursuing China to agree for an inquiry into the origin of the virus, has privately discussed stripping China of its “sovereign immunity,” to sue for damages and if successful experts warn that the move would likely shatter the already crumbling world economy and break the already strained diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing.

“Those are the kinds of decisions that, as you stare at them, it is unambiguous that they created increased risk, that people were still travelling around the world – why? While the Chinese Communist Party knew of the risk of transmission, it was still allowing people to travel outside of China while they had locked down a major city inside of their own country,” Peompeo told Breitbart News Network and satellite radio station SiriusXM Patriot in an interview as reported by PTI.