Corona: China defends itself against the BND laboratory theory

After reporting on the findings of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), China has warned to cautiously. The reports were about indications of the hypothesis that virus comes from a laboratory in China.

“In the question of Coronavirus, China decidedly rejects any form of political maneuvers,” said Foreign Office Spokeswoman Mao Ning in Beijing. The People’s Republic takes the view that scientific questions should be assessed by scientists.

The reports not only surprise Chinese government officials, but also the members of the parliamentary control committee (PKGR) of the Bundestag. “Unfortunately, there is a fundamental problem: We do not find out around 80 percent of all scandals, breakdowns and highly explosive processes in the responsible committees, but about the media,” criticized left-wing politician André Hahn, who belonged to the PKGR until the end of 2023. “This has gotten a little better in recent years,” he admitted.

Hahn told the German Press Agency: “The topic of Corona was not at the center of our work.” Questions about the origin of the virus have been located more in the health committee. “If the Federal Government had intelligence knowledge, it would have been obliged to inform the PKGR. It is on a different sheet whether it also makes it public.”

The Chinese foreign office spokeswoman referred to an expert group of the World Health Organization (WHO), which had spoken to researchers relevant laboratories in Wuhan. This came to the conclusion that a seepage of the virus from there was “highly unlikely”, explained Mao.

However, the WHO has been emphasizing for four years that all hypotheses to the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus would continue to be on the table. The investigation in 2021 was only the beginning, not the end. The WHO only called China again at the end of December 2024 to “provide data and access so that we can understand the origins of Covid-19. This is a moral and scientific commandment.”

As several media reported, the Chancellery had asked scientists to examine the BND for claiming the Coronavirus from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. According to the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, the BND had plausible information for the so -called laboratory thesis. These should therefore be evaluated by an expert round at meetings in recent months.

Information on the assessment of these experts was initially not available. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and the “Zeit” also report on appropriate research results.

According to the laboratory thesis, the Sars-COV-2 virus comes from a Chinese organic laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research is carried out on Coronaviruses. The second theory is that the virus, like that of the Sars epidemic from 2002/2003, had a natural origin.

When asked about the reports, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) only replied at a press date in the Chancellery on Wednesday: “As far as the information is concerned, this is not the place to talk about it.”

His predecessor, former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), was in view of the reports on secret service skills on the origin of the virus against allegations of cover -up in relation to her political action.

“Chancellor a. D. Dr. Merkel fundamentally rejects the accusation formulated in her question,” said a spokeswoman to the “Tagesspiegel”. The newspaper had asked the Merkel office about a reaction to the accusation that the Chancellery had covered up relevant information from the public.

The PKGR chairman, Konstantin von Notz, had generally welcomed “that the Federal Intelligence Service also deals intensively with the question of the origin of the Coronavirus”. The federal government and the intelligence services would have to report extensively in the coming days in the committed committees, also about the time sequences and the question of which what knew what when.