On May 7, 2021 The Australian revealed the existence of a Chinese military paper from 2015 that discusses weaponization of SARS coronaviruses. COVID-19 is the disease caused by a SARS coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Given 6.9 million COVID-19 deaths and counting, such military-scientific musings are the height of irresponsibility and should be decisively countered through new sanctions against China’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) researchers.
In the paper, Chinese military scientists and senior Chinese “public health” officials, predict that World War III, if it comes, will be decided by new biological weapons. We are no longer in the age of gunpowder or nuclear weapons. The future of war is biological, they argue.
The document is consistent with significant prior evidence of offensive Chinese biowarfare research that can access technologies such as gene-editing and viral “gain-of-function” (GOF) processes. Chinese military researchers have also shown an interest in bioweapon genetic targeting. A specific ethnic genetic attack technology would be a biological weapon that targets a specific ethnicity. Gene-editing, such as CRISPR technology, could facilitate such targeting. GOF produces new viruses that are more transmissible and lethal than their progenitors, for example, use of an avian influenza virus to evolve, in the lab, a virus that can infect humans. If China can put these technologies together, and has the will to do so, it could design a killer virus that only infects a particular race that China considers to be an enemy.
As recently as June 2020, the U.S. Department of State (DoS) expressed concern (pdf) that China was violating the Biological [and Toxin] Weapons Convention (BWC or BTWC) of 1984 through research into dual-use technologies. In 2005, DoS alleged that “China maintains some elements of an offensive [biological weapons] capability in violation of its BTWC obligations.” DoS made similar charges in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The 2019 report stated that “Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC.” The 2020 report was more specific, about “compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat,” and stated that China had an offensive biological warfare (BW) program from the early 1950s to at least the late 1980s. The report noted that China had not acknowledged the BW program, or provided evidence of its dismantlement.
The newly-discovered Chinese military paper is titled “The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons.” Eighteen authors at the highest levels of China’s military and academic hierarchy wrote the 263-page paper. It was obtained by DoS in May 2020, and independently authenticated by digital forensics specialist Robert Potter. Additional details of the paper will be published in Sharri Markson’s forthcoming September book on the origins of COVID-19, What Really Happened in Wuhan (HarperCollins).
By Anders Corr
Anders Corr has a BA/MA in political science from Yale University (2001) and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a Principal at Corr Analytics Inc., Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored “The Concentration of Power” (forthcoming 2021) and “No Trespassing,” and edited “Great Powers, Grand Strategies.”
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