The biggest hurdle to discovering the origins and trajectory of the pandemic is the fact that the virus arose in a country that is the antithesis of transparency and trustworthiness. The tight controls over information, data and opinion that are exercised in China by the Communist Party under President Xi Jinping are enabled by layers of surveillance, censorship and punishment.
For Xi, letting Chinese citizens or foreign investigators gain unfettered access to critical sites, documents and personnel that could unveil the origins of the virus is a political threat. From his perspective, such a process could end up exposing gross failures of the Communist Party’s regulations and safety measures, if not something more sinister.
An uninhibited inquiry into the origins of the virus could undermine Xi’s narrative of China as a supremely efficient nation whose system is superior to that of the ‘declining’ west. Xi often reminds his state and party machinery about the demise of the Soviet Union and argues that ‘ideological confusion’ and openness to alternative views are catastrophic to the very existence of communist rule.
This is the reasoning behind China influencing the composition of the WHO’s scientific delegation and then holding up its visit to Wuhan until February 2021. The only public international investigation that China ultimately allowed was designed as a ‘joint mission’ between the WHO and China, and the report of this carefully negotiated exercise was unsurprisingly noncommittal. It simply noted that all theories of the origins of the virus deserved ‘further studies’.
Chinese state media and diplomats deride calls for additional data linked to the virus as ‘politically motivated’ attempts by foreign powers to smear China’s reputation. Beijing claims that it stands for ‘scientific’ pursuit rather than sham political inquests. This line conveniently sidesteps the fact that the truth about the virus, whatever it is, is a matter of core political survival for communist rule, which has entered its eighth decade in China.
At the same time, given the escalating ‘new Cold War’ between China and the United States, it is undeniable that the search for the roots of Covid-19 is a geopolitical hot button. The sensational revelations that point to a possible leak of the virus from a Wuhan laboratory have been the handiwork of American and allied intelligence agencies. If not for periodic disclosures by US spy agencies and the critiques of China by hawkish politicians, international attention may have drifted from the fundamental issue of how the virus was formed and disseminated.
While the sovereignty-constrained WHO has failed to achieve much, the freer targeted espionage done by national security apparatuses of western countries is more penetrating and capable of extracting material that either pins China down or keeps afloat doubts about what China is hiding.
Multiple private conspiracy theories have circulated alongside the official probes by spooks. The belief that the virus is a biological weapon which has been accidentally or deliberately unleashed is widely shared.
China has joined the melee with counter-allegations that the virus may have been the product of a US biological weapons experiment. But thanks to the low credibility and over-the-top style of Chinese ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, such defensive ripostes have not convinced anyone beyond the Communist Party-managed nationalistic bubble inside China.
If a worldwide opinion poll about the origins of the virus was conducted amid this fog of misinformation and suspicion, China is likely to be deemed guilty in most countries. To be sure, China is not paying a price for this negative perception in material terms, as is being demonstrated by its robust economic recovery and growing military footprint. But because it has been so secretive and unwilling to accept any fault whatsoever, the lingering shadow of doubt about Wuhan will taint its claim to lead the post-Covid world order.
The writer is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs
