The Xi Jinping regime’s order that would make it impossible to find traces of the origin of the coronavirus in the Wuhan laboratory

In May 2019, the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology showed up in an old-fashioned conference room. A local representative of the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets from china it was on the desk.

The official, Tang kaihong, discussed the national security risks of the institute’s investigations and warned of infiltration efforts by foreign spies, according to a report released by the institute’s parent organization, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Researchers are committed to protecting confidential information.

The laboratory of Wuhan has attracted worldwide attention for his research on the coronavirus bat in the city where the pandemic started. The events revealed a research niche which, in China, United States and other countries – operates in secrecy due to the risks to national security posed by handling deadly pathogens.

A review of public records and internal laboratory guidelines reveals the existence of unspecified classified projects and a discussion of Responsibilities of Laboratories under China’s State Secrets Law. Some registries mention protocols for disclosing information to strangers and sealing some investigative reports for up to two decades.

Secrecy may help explain why efforts to confirm or deny the lab’s leak theory of the pandemic’s origins have made little headway.. President Joe biden ordered US intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to determine the origin of the virus, exactly the type of operation for which the laboratory Wuhan was prepared over a decade ago with the creation of systems to deal with confidential information.

The precautions do not mean the lab has something to do with the origin of the virus, or that there is anything wrong with its classified projects. United States it also conducts classified pathogen investigations and requires employees of high-containment laboratories to pass a background check.

China’s threshold for classification of secrets is lower than in some countries; According to China’s Comprehensive State Secrets Law, this material covers not only military and diplomatic matters, but also sensitive information about the country’s economic, scientific and social development., and the authorities have wide discretion.

A lot of scientists Westerners favor the theory that the pandemic started in nature, calling it the simplest explanation. But recognize that laboratory accidents happen frequently. In 2019, only in United States, US regulators recorded 219 accidental releases of “select agents”-Virus or deadly toxins- and 13 samples lost in the annual report of the Federal Selected Agents Program.

It is not known how often these laboratory accidents occur in China. In 2004, Chinese health authorities acknowledged that a laboratory accident had caused a localized epidemic of SARS, a year after the epidemic was largely brought under control.

So far, no evidence has appeared to contradict the claims of researchers at Wuhan that they did not encounter covid-19 before the pandemic and that there was no laboratory accident.

Robert Gallo, Director of Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, said that even with the new research, it seems unlikely that a lab leak can be proven or ruled out. “We’ll never know the answer“, He said. “Either we take his word for it, or we send you out with some muscular dudes and draw blood from them. Would we tolerate this? No we wouldn’t”.

Laboratory guidelines Wuhan on information disclosure, they say that the institute shares details of its work with the public, with the exception of state, research and labor secrets, matters under investigation and disclosures that would violate the law.

The subjects of the classified laboratory projects are unknown. The laboratory and National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets They did not answer questions on the subject.

the United States Department of State said in January that the Wuhan had worked in classified projects, including animal experiments, with the Chinese military since at least 2017. The Washington Post could not confirm this independently, but found public documents indicating that the lab worked with Chinese military hospitals in unclassified projects for drug development and AIDS prevention, as well as cases in which laboratory officials mentioned classified projects to the institute.

Angela Rasmussen, researcher at University of Saskatchewan Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Organization, said high-level containment laboratories, including those of United States, have privacy requirements for a number of reasons, such as preventing hostile outsiders from gaining access to deadly pathogens and protecting intellectual property.

“If the pandemic had started in the Washington area, the US government can be counted on not to allow an unrestricted “independent” investigation for the same reasons: This is a significant long-term security risk that will not cannot be completely mitigated.“, He said. “This does not indicate the need to conceal anything beyond not allowing potential opposing powers to have carte blanche to gain access to secure government facilities.”.

In March 2014, China Updates its State Secrets Law Enforcement Regulations, providing practical advice for those whose work involves sensitive information. Among the new requirements: that obsolete equipment be disposed of so that the information it contains can never be recovered.

What might have been a low-profile bureaucratic exercise turned into something high-level when President Xi Jinping declared national security a priority the following month., saying that the country was facing growing threats. Officials were quick to follow the line, even going so far as to make public the application of confidentiality rules.

In May 2014, the subsidiary of Wuhan of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the laboratory’s parent organization, held a meeting to discuss the handling of confidential information, according to an article posted on the laboratory’s website. CASE. Chen pingping, deputy general manager of the branch, told participants to follow the new rules, including those for better personnel control in classified projects and more careful handling of documents.

It is necessary that “standardize the handling of old documents, to decisively prevent documents containing confidential information from reaching the public“, He said.

It was followed in October 2014 by a training session for more than 60 laboratory staff. Wuhan who were members of the Communist Party. Xiao Gengfu, head of the laboratory’s confidentiality committee, spoke about the meaning of state secrets and the institute’s protocols.

“He noted that the work of confidentiality is linked to the security of the party and the nation.According to a summary published by the CAS.

In 2018, Xiao was promoted to party secretary of the lab, often the most powerful position in a Chinese organization, even when someone else is the incumbent boss, according to Jude Blanchette, an expert on Chinese politics in Center for Strategic and International Studies situated at Washington.

In the list of laboratory heads that appears on the Internet, Xiao comes second after the CEO Wang yanyi. The title of party secretary Xiao He only appears on the lab’s Chinese site, and the English version identifies him as deputy general manager.

Xiao seems to have followed the lab’s research on the coronavirus closely since the start of the pandemic: he has co-authored at least 15 peer-reviewed papers related to the novel coronavirus, more Wang and other institute leaders, according to ResearchGate.

In recent years, the lab has held regular confidentiality training sessions for staff, including one in 2018 where stakeholders discussed best practices for bringing researchers in and out of classified projects, guidelines on trips abroad for people involved in sensitive projects and the “confidentiality management when welcoming foreigners”. This session took place several months after a visit by American diplomats, who telegraphed to Washington about security concerns at the institute..

the Privacy work has continued in the lab since the pandemic put it in the world spotlight, highlighting the challenges of evaluating the laboratory’s leak theory.

In August 2020, the laboratory announced the search for an IT specialist for your privacy office, specifying that the successful candidate must be a member of the party.

This spring, the laboratory distributed thesis stamp forms to students on confidential subjects. One of the forms indicated that “confidential” theses would be sealed up to 10 years and “filed” up to 20 years..

(C) The Washington Post.-

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