Prominent Chinese hawks warn Xi Jinping to avoid 'serious mistakes'
After more than a dozen senior Chinese military officials were removed from office in just the last week of December and a slew of further reaching corruption charges, dismissals, and even a mysterious death or two massed throughout the rest of 2023, it has become evident that something is seriously wrong in the highest echelons of China’s Defense apparatus. And according to an explosive new report from Bloomberg, the problems may be so extensive that they’re forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to rethink his plans for a Taiwan invasion.
Xi Jinping is doing his best Darth Vader impression and has the Chinese military in a force choke. After purging the system of anyone who can think, all that remains is the shell of a Defense Minister (now a press secretary for military diplomacy) and the "real" decision makers - the Central Military Commission - chaired by none other than Xi himself.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The two generals are calling for policy re-evaluation and warned against 'serious mistakes'
It seems all is not well in China as President Xi Jinping is facing a challenge from two People's Liberation Army (PLA) hawks.
They have written about their disappointment with Xi's aggressive foreign policy.
There's a purge underway in China.
"If in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, China wants to tell the rest of the world, 'Screw you, it's not even worth investigating,' that's on them. But we shouldn't give them a free pass," he said.
While Metzl and others, like Feith, believe there is more circumstantial evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from a lab than naturally, many scientists say the opposite. Based on the available evidence, they believe, like the WHO team, that the coronavirus appears far more likely to have emerged naturally.
Alina Chan, a postdoctoral scientist working on genetics at the Broad Institute in Boston, said this is a critical juncture.
"This time it's China that's in the hot spot. ... But next time, maybe it's not China. So, if we decide that we cannot investigate, we just give up this time, then other countries might feel that there isn't an accountability mechanism in place," she said.
That could potentially lead to less stringent, and more dangerous, lab conditions, she said.
Politics at play
Meanwhile, not far beneath the surface of the debate are geopolitical tensions between China and the United States — relations between the two countries soured in the last year under Trump and show no signs of improving under the Biden administration.
Trump sought to place maximum blame for COVID-19 on China — and pushed the lab leak theory — in what some of his critics saw as an effort to deflect criticism of his own handling of the pandemic.
But Scott Kennedy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said China's foot-dragging on an investigation, counter-accusations and secrecy haven't helped its case.
"The West prides itself on its openness and transparency relative to authoritarian places like China, so in the competition for soft power and legitimacy this is a useful topic to continue to push," he said.
For its part, the Biden administration joined 13 other governments to criticize the WHO report and call for more openness from China on Tuesday. In a joint statement, they did not mention the lab leak theory, but the Biden administration hasn't ruled it out.
"I think the administration has made it pretty clear that given the lack of Chinese transparency, it is not comfortable eliminating the lab escape theory," said Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
"The fact that WHO head Tedros, who has previously championed China's transparency, stated that more extensive research was needed before eliminating the possibility that the virus escaped from the lab signals that continued skepticism is merited," Economy said.
Impact on U.S.-China relations
Still, some worry that a hard-charging focus on hypothetical lab accidents might further bog down U.S.-China relations, which are at their rockiest in decades.
Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania's Villanova University, was in charge of science and health issues at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s. She said there's been a lot of cooperation between China and the United States in the field of science and public health, including on this pandemic, and it's not best served by piling pressure on Beijing.