Tag Archives: China

EU and UK say Hong Kong newspaper raid shows China cracking down on dissent

By Guy Faulconbridge and Robin Emmott

LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union and Britain on Thursday said a police raid on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily showed that China was using a new national security law to crack down on dissent and silence the media rather than deal with public security.

Just days after the world’s richest democracies scolded China over human rights at a Group of Seven summit and the NATO military alliance warned Beijing over its ambitions, Hong Kong police made dawn arrests of Apple Daily newspaper executives.

Five hundred Hong Kong police officers sifted through reporters’ computers and notebooks at the daily, the first case in which authorities have cited media articles as potentially violating the national security law.

The raid “further demonstrates how the national security law is being used to stifle media freedom and freedom of expression in Hong Kong,” EU spokesperson Nabila Massrali said in a statement.

“It is essential that all the existing rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents are fully protected, including freedom of the press and of publication.”

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also said the raid was aimed at silencing dissent.

“Freedom of the press is one of the rights China promised to protect in the Joint Declaration and should be respected,” Raab said, referring to an accord guaranteeing autonomy for Hong Kong when London handed over its colony to China in 1997.

Hong Kong Security Secretary John Lee described the newsroom as a “crime scene” and said the operation was aimed at those who use reporting as a “tool to endanger” national security.

Western leaders say Chinese President Xi Jinping, 68, is cracking down on Hong Kong, which Britain handed back to China in 1997, and Western security officials have expressed apprehension about Xi’s next target.

Britain and its allies say the national security law breaches the “one country, two systems” principle enshrined in the 1984 Sino-British treaty that guaranteed Hong Kong’s autonomy.

China has repeatedly warned Britain and the United States to stop meddling in its affairs and says many Western powers are gripped by an “imperial hangover” after years of humiliating China during the 19th and 20th Centuries.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Robin Emmott; Editing by Alistair Smout and Peter Graff)

Philippines again suspends scrapping of troop pact with U.S. amid China dispute

By Karen Lema and Idrees Ali

MANILA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Philippines has again suspended a decision to scrap a crucial agreement governing the U.S. troop presence in the country, its foreign minister said on Monday, amid continuing maritime pressure from China.

The Pentagon welcomed the announcement from Manila – the third suspension of the decision covering the two-decade-old Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that had been due to expire in August – but analysts said there would be disappointment in both countries that it was not renewed.

Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin said the suspension would be for a further six months while President Rodrigo Duterte “studies, and both sides further address his concerns regarding, particular aspects of the agreement.”

The Philippines is a U.S. treaty ally and several military agreements are dependent on the VFA, which provides rules for the rotation of thousands of U.S. troops in and out of the Philippines for war drills and exercises.

Having the ability to rotate in troops is important not only for the defense of the Philippines, but strategically for the United States when it comes to countering China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the region.

“The Department welcomes the government of the Philippines’ decision to again suspend termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

“We value the Philippines as an equal, sovereign partner in our bilateral alliance. Our partnership contributes not only to the security of our two nations, but also strengthens the rules-based order that benefits all nations in the Indo-Pacific.”

MARITIME TENSIONS

Greg Poling, a maritime security expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there would be frustration in Washington and most of the Philippine government.

“It isn’t the worst possible scenario, obviously, but Philippine officials were really signaling that they were confident they had reached a deal Duterte would get on board with, and instead everyone has to remain in limbo for at least another six months,” he said.

Poling said he did not think there was any substantive issue holding up an agreement.

“It is now as simple as Duterte doesn’t seem to want it, but everyone else does. If he won’t reverse course but he also doesn’t want to waste political capital on an unpopular decision heading into election season, then kicking the can down the road is his preferred option.”

Duterte told Washington last year he was cancelling the deal amid outrage over a senator and ally being denied a U.S. visa, but he has repeatedly suspended the expiration date.

The latest suspension comes at a time of continued tensions between Manila and Beijing over disputed waters in the South China Sea and a U.S. announcement last week that the Philippines would be among countries that would receive millions of COVID-19 vaccines it is donating.

Ties between Washington and its former colony have been complicated by Duterte’s rise to power in 2016 and his frequent condemnation of U.S. foreign policy and embrace of China, which has nevertheless continued to pressure his country’s maritime boundaries.

Manila has repeatedly protested what it calls the “illegal” and “threatening” presence of hundreds of Chinese “maritime militia” vessels inside its exclusive economic zone.

Jose Manuel Romualdez, Manila’s ambassador to Washington, told Reuters this month the VFA had been revamped to make it “acceptable” and “mutually beneficial” to both countries.

Manila has in the past been unhappy about issues such as a lack of jurisdiction over U.S. personnel who commit crimes in the Philippines and environmental damage during maritime drills.

(Reporting by Karen Lema in Manila; additional reporting by Idrees Ali and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

China brands COVID-19 lab-leak theory as ‘absurd,’ Blinken urges transparency

By David Brunnstrom, Tom Daly and Michael Martina

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the need for cooperation and transparency over the origins of COVID-19 in a call with Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Friday and raised other contentious topics, including China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Yang, China’s top diplomat, expressed to Blinken Beijing’s serious concern that some people in the United States were spreading the “absurd story” about the coronavirus escaping from a Wuhan laboratory, Chinese state media said.

Yang, head of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of China’s ruling Communist Party, also told Blinken that Washington should handle Taiwan-related issues “carefully and appropriately,” state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The call came ahead of a G7 summit in Britain attended by U.S. President Joe Biden that is expected to be dominated by Washington-led efforts to counter China’s growing influence.

The world’s two largest economies are deeply at odds over issues ranging from trade and technology to human rights and the coronavirus. Washington should work with Beijing to put ties “back on track,” Yang said.

Yang, who had a fiery exchange with Blinken in Alaska in March during the Biden administration’s first high-level meeting with its Chinese counterparts, said Beijing firmly opposed what he called “abominable actions” over the pandemic, which he said were being used to slander China, CCTV said.

The State Department said the diplomats also discussed North Korea policy and that Blinken expressed U.S. concerns over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and what Washington describes as the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.

Blinken also called on China to stop its pressure campaign against Taiwan and to release “wrongfully detained” U.S. and Canadian citizens, it said in a statement.

‘RESPECT FACTS AND SCIENCE’

The State Department said the discussion on North Korea – an issue on which the United States is keen for more Chinese action to press its ally and neighbor to give up its nuclear weapons – focused on the need for Beijing and Washington “to work together for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

It said the two diplomats also continued discussions on shared global challenges, including Iran and Myanmar, and the climate crisis.

“Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, the Secretary stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for WHO Phase 2 expert-led studies in China,” it said, referring to the World Health Organization.

Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank, said that although the agenda included potential areas of cooperation, the conversation appeared dominated by contentious issues.

She said Yang’s call for Washington to work with Beijing to put ties “back on track” indicated China was still putting the onus on the United States for the problems in the relationship.

“That’s a non-starter, but demonstrates that the Chinese are sticking to their tried-and-true diplomatic approaches, even though they are not successful.”

A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded the hypothesis of a viral leak from a Wuhan lab was plausible and deserved further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.

“We urge the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing the issue … and focus on international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic,” Yang said.

His comments on Taiwan followed a visit to the Chinese-claimed island last weekend by three U.S. senators on a U.S. military aircraft. They met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and announced the donation to Taiwan of 750,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, drawing a sharp rebuke from China’s defense ministry.

In addition to coinciding with Biden’s first overseas trip as president to attend the G7 summit, the call comes as Washington has been pushing policies to address challenges from China.

In the past eight days, Biden updated an executive order banning U.S. investment in companies linked to China’s military and rolled out steps aimed at China to shore up U.S. supply chains. His trade representative Katherine Tai held a call with Taiwan, the Pentagon wrapped up a China policy review, and the Senate passed a sweeping package of China-focused legislation.

Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said all that amounted to good timing for the administration to have an exchange with Beijing.

“The White House should feel more confident taking these calls and letting Beijing run down their stale talking points,” Sayers said.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Doina Chiacu, David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina in Washington; Writing by Tom Daly; Editing by Alex Richardson, Mark Heinrich, Angus MacSwan, Paul Simao and Daniel Wallis)

China’s attacks on ‘foreign forces’ threaten Hong Kong’s global standing -top U.S. envoy

By Greg Torode, Anne Marie Roantree and James Pomfret

HONG KONG (Reuters) -The top U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong said the imposition of a new national security law had created an “atmosphere of coercion” that threatens both the city’s freedoms and its standing as an international business hub.

In unusually strident remarks to Reuters this week, U.S. Consul-General Hanscom Smith called it “appalling” that Beijing’s influence had “vilified” routine diplomatic activities such as meeting local activists, part of a government crackdown on foreign forces that was “casting a pall over the city”.

Smith’s remarks highlight deepening concerns over Hong Kong’s sharply deteriorating freedoms among many officials in the administration of President Joe Biden one year after China’s parliament imposed the law. Critics of the legislation say the law has crushed the city’s democratic opposition, civil society and Western-style freedoms.

The foreign forces issue is at the heart of the crimes of “collusion” with foreign countries or “external elements” detailed in Article 29 of the security law, scholars say.

Article 29 outlaws a range of direct or indirect links with a “foreign country or an institution, organization or individual” outside greater China, covering offences from the stealing of secrets and waging war to engaging in “hostile activities” and “provoking hatred.” They can be punished by up to life in prison.

“People … don’t know where the red lines are, and it creates an atmosphere that’s not just bad for fundamental freedoms, it’s bad for business,” Smith said.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he added. “You can’t purport to be this global hub and at the same time invoke this kind of propaganda language criticizing foreigners.”

Smith is a career U.S. foreign service officer who has deep experience in China and the wider region, serving in Shanghai, Beijing and Taiwan before arriving in Hong Kong in July 2019. He made his comments in an interview at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Hong Kong on Wednesday after Reuters sought the consulate’s views on the impact of the national security law.

In a response to Reuters, Hong Kong’s Security Bureau said that “normal interactions and activities” were protected, and blamed external elements for interfering in the city during the protests that engulfed Hong Kong in 2019.

“There are indications in investigations and intelligence that foreign intervention was rampant with money, supplies and other forms of support,” a representative said. He did not to identify specific individuals or groups.

Government adviser and former security chief Regina Ip told Reuters it was only “China haters” who had reason to worry about falling afoul of the law.

“There must be criminal intent, not just casual chat,” she said.

Smith’s comments come as other envoys, business people and activists have told Reuters of the chilling effect on their relationships and connections across China’s most international city.

Private investigators say demand is surging among law firms, hedge funds and other businesses for security sweeps of offices and communications for surveillance tools, while diplomats describe discreet meetings with opposition figures, academics and clergy.

Fourteen Asian and Western diplomats who spoke to Reuters for this story said they were alarmed at attempts by Hong Kong prosecutors to treat links between local politicians and foreign envoys as potential national security threats.

In April, a judge cited emails from the U.S. mission to former democratic legislator Jeremy Tam as a reason to deny him bail on a charge of conspiracy to commit subversion. Tam, one of 47 pro-democracy politicians charged, is in jail awaiting trial; his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s appalling that people would take a routine interaction with a foreign government representative and attribute something sinister to it,” Smith said, adding that the consulate did not want to put anyone in an “awkward situation.”

In the latest ratcheting up of tensions with Western nations, Hong Kong on Friday slammed a U.K. government report that said Beijing was using the security law to “drastically curtail freedoms” in the city.

Hong Kong authorities also this week lambasted the European Union for denouncing Hong Kong’s recent overhaul of its political system.

‘TOUGH CASES’ LOOM

Although local officials said last year the security law would only affect a “tiny minority” of people, more than 100 have been arrested under the law, which has affected education, media, civil society and religious freedoms among other areas, according to those interviewed for this story.

Some have raised concerns that the provisions would hurt the business community, a suggestion Ip dismissed.

“I think they have nothing to worry about unless they are bent on using external forces to harm Hong Kong,” Ip said. “I speak to a lot of businessmen who are very bullish about the economic situation.”

Retired judges familiar with cases such as Jeremy Tam’s said they were shocked at the broad use of foreign connections by prosecutors. One told Reuters he did not see how that approach would be sustainable, as the government accredits diplomats, whose job is to meet people, including politicians.

Hong Kong’s judiciary said it would not comment on individual cases.

Smith said Hong Kong’s growing atmosphere of “fear, coercion and uncertainty” put the special administrative region’s future in jeopardy.

“It’s been very distressing to see this relentless onslaught on Hong Kong’s freedoms and back-tracking on the commitment that was made to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy,” he said.

(Reporting By Greg Torode, Anne Marie Roantree and James Pomfret. Additional reporting by Clare Jim. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Biden supply chain ‘strike force’ to target China on trade

“We’re trying to understand all of the logistics behind the supply chain” to loosen bottlenecks, Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to Biden, told Reuters. “One of the best ways to do that is to talk to people in the industry and we’re doing a lot of that.”

The United States faced serious challenges in obtaining medical equipment during the COVID-19 epidemic and now faces severe bottlenecks in a number of areas, including computer chips, stalling production of goods, such as cars.

While the White House said it is working closely with private industry to find solutions for the shortages, officials also said companies were part of the problem.

“Decades of focusing on labor as a cost to be managed and not an asset to be invested in have weakened our domestic supply chains, undermining wages and union density for our workers,” and made it harder for companies to find skilled talent, Sameera Fazili, deputy director of the National Economic Council, told reporters.

U.S. agencies are required to issue more complete reports a year after Biden’s order, identifying gaps in domestic manufacturing capabilities and policies to address them.

TRADE WARS WITH ALLIES NOT WANTED

But the White House offered little in the way of new measures to immediately ease chip supply shortages, noting in a fact sheet that the Commerce Department would work to “facilitate information flow” between chip makers and end users and increase transparency, a step Reuters previously reported.

In medicine, the administration will use the Defense Production Act to accelerate efforts to manufacture 50 to 100 critical drugs domestically rather than relying on imports.

And to address supply bottlenecks from lumber to steel that have raised fears of inflation, the administration is starting a task force focused on homebuilding and construction, semiconductors, transportation, as well as agriculture and food.

“We fully expect these bottlenecks to be temporary in nature and to resolve themselves over the next few weeks,” said Fazili.

Semiconductors are a central focus in sprawling legislation currently before Congress, which would pump billions of dollars into creating domestic production capacity for the chips used in everything from consumer electronics to military equipment.

Biden has said China will not surpass the United States as a global leader on his watch, and confronting Beijing is one of the few bipartisan issues in an otherwise deeply divided Congress.

But some lawmakers have expressed concerns that a package of China-related bills includes huge taxpayer-funded outlays for companies without safeguards to prevent them from sending related production or research to China.

The White House said a measure of success of the supply chain effort would be more diverse suppliers for crucial products from like-minded allies and partners, and fewer from geopolitical competitors.

“We know that as we strengthen cooperation with our allies and partners, we also have to push back against unfair trade practices by competitor nations that have hollowed out the U.S. industrial base and undermine our supply chain security,” said Harrell.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Trevor Hunnicutt and Heather Timmons in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken, Nick Zieminski and Matthew Lewis)

Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab workers

(Reuters) -Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?” the report quoted Fauci as saying about three of the nine.

The origin of the virus is hotly contested, with U.S. intelligence agencies still examining reports that researchers at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan were seriously ill in 2019 a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.

However, Chinese scientists and officials have consistently rejected the lab leak hypothesis, saying the virus could have been circulating in other regions before it hit Wuhan and might have even entered China through imported frozen food shipments or wildlife trading.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, declined to comment directly on whether China would release the records of the nine but firmly denied that the laboratory was linked to the outbreak of COVID-19.

At a regular briefing on Friday, he referred to a March 23 statement from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that said no staff or graduates were confirmed to have contracted the virus.

Wang reiterated China’s position that reports of a lab leak are a “conspiracy theory.”

Financial Times reported that Fauci continues to believe the virus was first transmitted to humans through animals, pointing out that even if the lab researchers did have COVID-19, they could have contracted the disease from the wider population.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)

Biden order bans investment in dozens of Chinese defense and tech firms

By Michael Martina and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that bans U.S. entities from investing in dozens of Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors, a move his administration says expands the scope of a legally flawed Trump-era order.

The Treasury Department will enforce and update on a “rolling basis” the new ban list of about 59 companies, which bars buying or selling publicly traded securities in target companies, and replaces an earlier list from the Department of Defense, senior administration officials told reporters.

The order prevents U.S. investment from supporting the Chinese military-industrial complex, as well as military, intelligence, and security research and development programs, Biden said in the order.

“In addition, I find that the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside the PRC and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constitute unusual and extraordinary threats,” Biden said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

A White House fact sheet on the order said the policy would take effect for those companies listed on Aug. 2.

Major Chinese firms included on the previous Defense Department list were also placed on the updated list, including Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), China Mobile Communications Group, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd, Huawei Technologies Ltd and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

SMIC is key to China’s national drive to boost its domestic chip sector.

“We fully expect that in the months ahead … we’ll be adding additional companies to the new executive order’s restrictions,” one of the senior officials said.

A second official told reporters that the inclusion of Chinese surveillance technology companies expanded the scope of the Trump administration’s initial order last year, which the White House argues was carelessly drafted, leaving it open to court challenges.

Biden has been reviewing a number of aspects of U.S. policy toward China, and his administration had extended a deadline for implementation set by former President Donald Trump’s order while it crafted its new policy framework.

The move is part of Biden’s broader series of steps to counter China, including reinforcing U.S. alliances and pursuing large domestic investments to bolster American economic competitiveness, amid increasingly sour relations between the world’s two most powerful countries.

Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator Kurt Campbell said last month that a period of engagement with China had come to an end and that the dominant paradigm in bilateral ties going forward would be one of competition.

Senior officials said the Treasury Department would give guidance later on what the scope of surveillance technology means, including whether companies are facilitating “repression or serious human rights abuses.”

“We really want to make sure that any future prohibitions are on legally solid ground. So, our first listings really reflect that,” a second senior administration official said.

Investors would have time to “unwind” investments, a third official said.

The new list provided few surprises for investors looking to see if they need to unload even more Chinese stocks and bonds.

But some previously identified companies, such as Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC), which is spearheading Chinese efforts to compete with Boeing Co and Airbus, as well as two companies that had challenged the ban in court, Gowin Semiconductor Corp and Luokung Technology Corp, were not included.

In May, a judge signed an order removing the designation on Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi, which was among the more high-profile Chinese technology companies that the Trump administration targeted for alleged ties to China’s military.

Stewart Baker, a former Department of Homeland Security official, said the Treasury’s “settled regulatory and legal regime” made it a better place than the Defense Department to enforce the ban.

“This follows in a growing tradition of the Biden administration coming along and saying ‘Trump was right in principle and wrong in execution, and we’ll fix that,'” Baker said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and Karen FreifeldEditing by Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)

China reports first human case of H10N3 bird flu

By Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu

BEIJING (Reuters) -A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with a rare strain of bird flu known as H10N3, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.

Many different strains of bird flu are present in China and some sporadically infect people, usually those working with poultry. There is no indication that H10N3 can spread easily in humans.

The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalized on April 28 and diagnosed with H10N3 on May 28, the health commission said. It did not give details on how the man was infected.

He is now stable and ready to be discharged. Investigation of his close contacts found no other cases, the NHC said. No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have been reported globally, it said.

H10N3 is low pathogenic, which means it causes relatively less severe disease in poultry and is unlikely to cause a large-scale outbreak, the NHC added.

The strain is “not a very common virus,” said Filip Claes, regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases at the regional office for Asia and the Pacific.

Only around 160 isolates of the virus were reported in the 40 years to 2018, mostly in wild birds or waterfowl in Asia and some limited parts of North America, and none had been detected in chickens so far, he added.

Analyzing the genetic data of the virus will be necessary to determine whether it resembles older viruses or if it is a novel mix of different viruses, Claes said.

There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.

(Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton, Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Richard Pullin, Barbara Lewis and Steve Orlofsky)

G7 criticizes nations who undermine global trade in rallying cry for reform

By William James

LONDON (Reuters) -Trade ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations criticized countries who undermine the global trading system and called for democratic states to rally behind reforms of the international trade rulebook.

Following a virtual meeting, the G7 members said they were concerned about “increased use of non-market policies and practices” and took aim at those who use heavy subsidies, mask the state’s involvement in the economy, and steal technology.

“These distort competition and reduce fairness and trust in the system,” they said in a communique issued by Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 this year.

“Fundamentally, we note that they are a threat to the integrity and sustainability of the rules-based multilateral trading system.”

The communique did not refer to China directly, but members like Britain have accused Beijing of undermining the system by using all the policies mentioned.

China, a World Trade Organization member since 2001, has denied criticism that it steals intellectual property, unfairly hurts the environment or improperly trades goods made with forced labor.

In another indirect reference to China, the communique also called on countries which use World Trade Organization rules designed for developing economies to their advantage, and called for the rules to be changed to prevent that.

Britain and other WTO members have previously argued that China benefits from exceptions to the rules which were made decades ago and no longer reflect its status as an economic superpower.

“We call on advanced WTO Members claiming developing country status to undertake full commitments in ongoing and future WTO negotiations,” the communique said.

The group held “frank and constructive” discussions regarding reform of the WTO dispute resolution system – parts of which were paralyzed in recent years by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

They said those discussion would continue at a further meeting in October, and more broadly expressed support for WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s efforts to reform the organization.

(Reporting by William James; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Toby Chopra and Nick Macfie)

What we know about the origins of COVID-19

By Deborah J. Nelson

(Reuters) -Scientists are revisiting a central mystery of COVID-19: Where, when and how did the virus that causes the disease originate?

The two prevailing competing theories are that the virus jumped from animals, possibly originating with bats, to humans, or that it escaped from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China. The following is what is known about the virus’ origins.

WHY IS THE LAB IN WUHAN A FOCUS OF INTEREST?

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a high-security research facility that studies pathogens in nature with the potential to infect humans with deadly and exotic new diseases.

The lab has done extensive work on bat-borne viruses since the 2002 SARS-CoV-1 international outbreak, which began in China, killing 774 people worldwide. The search for its origins led years later to discovery of SARS-like viruses in a southwest China bat cave.

The institute collects genetic material from wildlife for experimentation at its Wuhan lab. Researchers experiment with live viruses in animals to gauge human susceptibility. To reduce the risk of pathogens escaping accidentally, the facility is supposed to enforce rigorous safety protocols, such as protective garb and super air filtration. But even the strictest measures cannot eliminate such risks.

WHY DO SOME SCIENTISTS SUSPECT A LABORATORY ACCIDENT?

To some scientists, the release of a dangerous pathogen via a careless lab worker is a plausible hypothesis for how the pandemic started and warrants investigation. The Wuhan lab, China’s leading SARS research facility, is not far from the Huanan Seafood Market, which early in the health crisis was cited as the most likely place where animal-to-human transmission of the virus may have taken place. The market was also the site of the first known COVID-19 super spreader event. Their proximity raised immediate suspicions, fueled by the failure so far to identify any wildlife infected with the same viral lineage and compounded by the Chinese government’s refusal to allow the lab-leak scenario to be fully investigated.

Scientists and others have developed hypotheses based on general concerns about the risks involved in live virus lab research, clues in the virus’ genome, and information from studies by institute researchers. Although the Wuhan lab’s scientists have said they had no trace of SARS-CoV-2 in their inventory at the time, 24 researchers sent a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) urging a rigorous, independent investigation. The WHO’s first such mission to China this year failed to probe deeply enough, they wrote.

A U.S. State Department fact sheet, released before the WHO mission in the waning days of the Trump Administration, alleged, without proof, that several WIV researchers had fallen sick with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or common seasonal illnesses before the first publicly confirmed case in December 2019.

A May 5, story by Nicholas Wade in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said lab scientists experimenting on a virus sometimes insert a sequence called a “furin cleavage site” into its genome in a manner that makes the virus more infective. David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning virologist quoted in the article, said when he spotted the sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, he felt he had found the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.

WHAT ARE THE ARGUMENTS FOR ANIMAL-TO-HUMAN TRANSMISSION?

Many scientists believe a natural origin is more likely and have seen no scientific evidence to support the lab leak theory. Kristian G. Andersen, a scientist at Scripps Research who has done extensive work on coronaviruses, Ebola and other pathogens transmissible from animals to humans, said similar genomic sequences occur naturally in coronaviruses and are unlikely to be manipulated in the way Baltimore described for experimentation.

Scientists who favor the natural origins hypothesis have relied largely on history. Some of the most lethal new diseases of the past century have been traced to human interactions with wildlife and domestic animals, including the first SARS epidemic (bats), MERS-CoV (camels), Ebola (bats or non-human primates) and Nipah virus (bats).

While an animal source has not been identified so far, swabs of stalls in the wildlife section of the wildlife market in Wuhan after the outbreak tested positive, suggesting an infected animal or human handler.

HAS NEW INFORMATION EMERGED TO LEND CREDENCE TO ONE THEORY OVER ANOTHER?

The scientists’ March 4 letter to the WHO refocused attention on the lab-leak scenario, but offered no new evidence. Nor has definitive proof of a natural origin surfaced.

U.S. President Joe Biden on May 26 said his national security staff does not believe there is sufficient information to assess one theory to be more likely than the other. He instructed intelligence officials to collect and analyze information that could close in on definitive conclusion and report back in 90 days.

(Reporting by Deborah J. NelsonEditing by Bill Berkrot)