China says politics behind US' call for coronavirus origin probe

BEIJING: China on Thursday accused the Biden administration of playing politics and shirking its responsibility in calling for a renewed investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic that was first detected in China in late 2019.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing that President Joe Biden's order showed the US "does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing."

Biden told US intelligence officials to redouble their efforts to investigate the origins of the pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.

After months of minimising that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure on China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off Republican complaints the president has not been tough enough to press China on alleged obstruction.

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal in Wuhan, China.

Zhao also said the US must open itself up to investigations into its biological laboratories, including at the military's Fort Detrick base.

"The US side claims that it wants China to participate in a comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based international investigation," Zhao said.

"We would like to ask the US side to do the same as China and immediately cooperate with the World Health Organization on origin tracing research in a scientific manner."