China quotes Lincoln's 'fooling people' line back at US; refutes 24 'lies' on Covid-19

The ongoing tussle between China and the United States over the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus has led to constant waves of accusations and its rejection by the two countries.

In the past week, the Chinese foreign ministry has dedicated most of its press briefings to rejecting the allegations made by US politicians, especially Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that China had held back information regarding COVID-19 and that the virus had originated in a laboratory of Wuhan.

The Ministry on Sunday released a 30-page long article reiterating and expanding on the refutations made during the press briefings, which also called upon the 19th century US president, Abraham Lincoln.

“As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time and fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” it said in the prologue.

READ | Chinese President Xi Jinping Urged WHO Chief To Downplay Coronavirus Outbreak: Report

Countering the US suggestions that the COVID-19 was deliberately created or leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the article said that every evidence indicates the virus is not man-made and that the institute is not capable of synthesizing a novel coronavirus.

READ | China To Improvise Its Disease Prevention System Amid Criticism Over COVID-19 Response

‘Timely Warnings’

Rebuking US allegations that China was slow to sound the alarm, the Ministry released a timeline of how the country provided information to the international community in a ‘timely, open, and transparent’ manner.

The article also rejected western criticism of Beijing’s poor handling of Li Wenliang’s case, the Chinese doctor who had raised the alarm over the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. The Ministry stated that his death from COVID-19 had evoked rage and grief across the country. It further stated that Li was not a ‘whistle-blower’ and he was never arrested, which contradicts several US reports.

Countering accusations by US President Donald Trump and Pompeo that the new coronavirus should be called the ‘Chinese virus’ or ‘Wuhan virus’, the article cited documents from the World Health Organization which state that the name of a virus should not be specific to a country.

READ | China Continues To Hide & Obfuscate COVID 19 Data From World: Mike Pompeo

READ | US Introduces New Rule Tightening Visa Guidelines For Chinese Journalists