While coronavirus ravages the world, a political battle is also being waged with China resisting suggestions that it’s to blame. I have just spoken about this with Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, in a conference call with journalists from eight other European countries. I tried to gauge the mood in the White House towards China. Donald Trump has referred to the virus as the ‘China Virus’, a label vigorously resisted by Beijing. Some Chinese officials had even suggested that it might have American origins. Things seemed to have cooled after Trump’s recent call with Xi, but I asked Pompeo how worried he is about disinformation coming from China.
The answer, it seemed, is very concerned indeed. A Chinese official, Pompeo told me, had claimed a few weeks ago ‘that the US army had taken this to China’ and Trump had rebutted this.
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