China refutes 24 'lies' by U.S. politicians over coronavirus – Reuters
|Reuters is reporting on how China has issued a lengthy rebuttal of what it said were 24 “preposterous allegations” by some leading US politicians over its handling of the new coronavirus outbreak.
Key notes
A 30-page, 11,000-word article posted on the ministry website on Saturday night repeated and expanded on the refutations made during the press briefings, and began by invoking Abraham Lincoln, the 19th century US president.
The article also cited media reports that said Americans had been infected with the virus before the first case was confirmed in Wuhan. There is no evidence to suggest that is the case.
Keen to quash US suggestions that the virus was deliberately created or somehow leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the article said that all evidence shows the virus is not man-made and that the institute is not capable of synthesising a new coronavirus.
The article also provided a timeline of how China had provided information to the international community in a “timely”, “open and transparent” manner to rebuke US suggestions that it had been slow to sound the alarm.
Despite China’s repeated assurances, concerns about the timeliness of its information have persisted in some quarters.
A report by Der Spiegel magazine last Friday cited Germany’s BND spy agency as saying that China’s initial attempt to hold back information had cost the world four to six weeks that could have been used to fight the virus.
Rejecting suggestions by US President Donald Trump and Pompeo that the new coronavirus should be called the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”, the article cited documents from the World Health Organization to say the name of a virus should not be country-specific.
Market implications
This follows last week's escalation of trade war rhetoric from the US administration with Trump blaming China’s early handling of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019 for causing thousands of deaths and millions of job losses in the US. Trump has threatened to terminate the trade deal if China fails to meet its purchase commitments. The US dollar had been elevated on the risks associated with tradewars and the Aussie remains vunerable.
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