{"id":27119,"date":"2021-01-20T22:13:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/jan\/20\/china-revives-conspiracy-theory-of-us-army-link-to-covid"},"modified":"2021-01-20T22:13:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T13:13:39","slug":"china-revives-conspiracy-theory-of-us-army-link-to-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=27119","title":{"rendered":"China revives conspiracy theory of US army link to Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Suspicions about army lab spread on social media after official\u2019s tit-for-tat response to US claim<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/series\/coronavirus-live\/latest\">Coronavirus \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/coronavirus-outbreak\">See all our coronavirus coverage<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Attempts by Chinese authorities to shift the narrative around Covid-19\u2019s origins have reignited on social media this week after a government spokesperson revived a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/mar\/12\/conspiracy-theory-that-coronavirus-originated-in-us-gaining-traction-in-china\">conspiracy theory<\/a> that it came from a US army lab.<\/p>\n<p>Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry, was responding to a US state department \u201cfact sheet\u201d released last week that claimed there was new evidence of researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology falling ill before the first known cases of Covid-19 in the city. The state department did not provide data to back up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2021-01-16\/u-s-steps-up-claims-covid-19-may-have-escaped-from-chinese-lab\">its assertions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/jan\/20\/china-revives-conspiracy-theory-of-us-army-link-to-covid\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suspicions about army lab spread on social media after official\u2019s tit-for-tat response to US claimCoronavirus \u2013 latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageAttempts by Chinese authorities to shift the narrative around Covid-19\u2019s origins have reignite&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,1066,914,299,473,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-coronavirus","category-infectious-diseases","category-science","category-us-military","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27122,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27119\/revisions\/27122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}