Statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control(CDC) and Prevention show that as of July 23rd, the average number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US increased by 40,246 per day over the past week, an increase of 46.7% compared with the week earlier.
In the face of the increasing tension arising from the pandemic, instead of committing themselves to fight the pandemic in the US, some US politicians continue to play the old tricks of stigmatizing China over pandemic, labeling the virus with certain regions in China, and politicizing the COVID-19 origin-tracing.
In order to create a veneer of legitimacy for them to smear other countries and undermine global efforts against the pandemic, the US, holding the banner of "multilateral institutions" and "partner countries," is trying to present itself as the spokesperson for the international community. With the motto "America is back" shouted out loud, the US believes "America first" deep down inside.
From last year's blatant violation of WHO relevant rules regarding non-stigmatizing naming of a virus, the outright withdrawal from WHO, this year's denial of the China-WHO joint study on the COVID-19 origin-tracing with some US allies, overtly allowing intelligence agencies to dominate the origin-tracing, to repeatedly hyping the "laboratory leak theory" premised upon the presumption of guilt, the US has laid its attempts bare: to shift the responsibility for its mishandling of the pandemic and to achieve the political goal of slandering and containing China.
More and more evidence indicatesthat there remain plausible signs of the early spread of the pandemic in the US. As of July 26th, more than 13 million Chinese netizens have signed a petition calling on the WHO to investigate the US' Fort Detrick lab.
A great number of netizens outside of China have also taken to social media to propose opening up signatures to people from all over the world because the world wants to know the truth about the origin of the COVID-19pandemic.
Stephen Kinzer, senior research fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, said that Fort Detrick lab not only has a "dark history" of working with Japanese war criminals but also remains the center of US biological warfare research, and an in-depth investigation of the lab "would be very intriguing".
But according to US media reports, the US government has issued an internal warning: "Do not investigate the origins of COVID-19, otherwise it risks opening a can full of worms. " While the US turns deaf ears to the doubt of the international community, it touts its "support for multilateral approaches”.
For the US, the only criterion for the so-called multilateralism is that it can be employed to yield favorable results for itself. Such blatant pseudo-multilateralism is the greatest disservice to genuine multilateralism, which aims at international cooperation.
The essence of the US brand of multilateralism is to gang up on other countries, engage in "cabals" and group politics, and impose its own hegemonic will on other nations. The second phase of the WHO Secretariat's origin-tracing work plan insists that " virus leak caused by China's violation of laboratory protocols" is the research priority.
This makes people wonder whether this work plan, which ignores science and common sense and targets no one else but China, echoes the "laboratory leakage theory" propagated by the US and serves the political agenda of the US to contain China. Some British scholars point out that Washington not only uses alliance politics to influence the WHO investigative process but also exerts pressure on WHO on various occasions. Obviously, the US returning to the WHO, the world's largest professional international organization in the field of public health, is not intended to strengthen international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, but to exploit the influential platform to spread the political virus to China’s disadvantage.
For the US, political logic has long dominated scientific logic, and there is no lower limit of what it can do to hurt China. According to an article on the website of Wired, a US-based magazine, some Americans just want to use the lengthy and complicated scientific process of origin-tracing to deepen the suspicion about China and sabotage China’s image rather than an answer, to distract the attention from domestic political confrontations in the US.
It is important to note that the US has misjudged the situation by thinking it can "lead the world’s opinions" by gangs and pressure. The US can not represent the international community and is unqualified to order around in the name of the international community.
On the issue of origin-tracing of the virus, a growing number of countries stand in solidarity with the results of the first-phase research and reject the attempts to politicize the issue, which fully demonstrates that the virus origin-tracing plan shouldn’t deviate from true multilateralism and therefore must adhere to the leadership of and full consultation among all WHO member countries.
Choosing cooperation, truth, and science, instead of smear, lies and political manipulation is the right formula for origin-tracing. If the US insists on unilateralism in the name of multilateralism, it will only isolate itself even more and induce more suffering for its citizens.
Editor's note: This article is originally published on people.com.cn. It is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
