RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In a press statement on Thursday, May 6, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin reacted to President Jair Bolsonaro’s insinuation that China might have created the novel coronavirus in a laboratory. “We strongly oppose any attempt to politicize and stigmatize the virus,” he said.
Wenbin was asked about the Brazilian president’s statement during a press conference. The diplomat said that the real enemy is currently the virus, and that countries must unite to defeat it.
“The virus is the common enemy of humanity. The urgent task now is for all countries to unite in cooperation and strive for a quick and complete victory over the epidemic,” he said.
Speaking during an event at the Planalto Palace on Wednesday, May 5, Bolsonaro implied that the Asian country would have benefited economically from the novel coronavirus pandemic and that the disease was created in a laboratory as a way to unleash “chemical warfare.”
“It’s a new virus, no one knows if it was born in a laboratory or born because a human being ingested an unsuitable animal. But it is here, the military knows it is chemical, bacteriological and radiological warfare. Are we not facing a new war?” he said.
The president also said, “Which country has grown its GDP the most? I won’t tell you”, in a reference to the Chinese Gross Domestic Product 2.3% growth in 2020.
Later, during a visit to Rio de Janeiro, the president said that “he did not say the word China” in his speech and that Brazil will continue to sell to the Asian country and that China “needs to buy what we produce here.”
The theory that the virus was leaked, accidentally or otherwise, from a laboratory in Wuhan began to be spread early in the pandemic and had as its greatest exponent the then American president Donald Trump. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government itself have denied the rumor.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro had previously voiced the assumption. Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and ex-Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo were also involved in embarrassing situations with Beijing when they said that the Covid-19 vaccines developed in the country could be less effective.