Thanks to Beijing’s censorship, news about the coronavirus came too little too late in order to contain the outbreak successfully. Even though the coronavirus has to date been far less lethal than the flu, its long incubation period has ensured its spread as asymptomatic carriers spread around the globe. The Chinese government’s silence has at best created uncertainty and raised many questions. At worst, the silence has bred conspiracy.
After Tom Cotton raised questions in a Fox News interview about whether the coronavirus originated in a Chinese biological warfare or military laboratory, the press criticized the Republican Arkansas senator for allegedly dabbling in conspiracy. However, with so many unanswered questions, a bit more caution might be warranted on the part of the press.
It is just as irresponsible to trust any information put forward by the Chinese government as it is to voice theories absent evidence.
After all, there have been Cold War corollaries to what Wuhan now experiences that remain relevant today. In the Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov offered a highly personal account of living through Chernobyl as rumor spread that the accident was far more serious than the government acknowledged. Trofimov’s essay was useful to understand the nature of a government that would not hesitate to lie in order to save face, but Chernobyl may not have been the most relevant example to Wuhan.
The ignoble honor belongs instead to Sverdlovsk, today’s Yekaterinburg, in Russia’s Ural Mountains.
In January 1980, reports surfaced of an “outbreak of disease” in the city. U.S. intelligence reports suggested that an anthrax outbreak originated at a biological weapons facility located nearby, and American assessments placed the casualty count above 1,000. Satellite imagery showed that a building in the suspect military complex was abandoned after the incident. The Soviet government blamed tainted meat, and many of those critical of U.S. foreign policy worried that the truth (a Soviet violation of the Biological Weapons Convention) might undercut any chance for Cold War detente. However, evidence pointed to inhalation anthrax rather than the less contagious gastric variety. Witnesses and emigres reported quarantines, something necessary for spread-through-inhalation disease rather than foodborne disease.
It took glasnost and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union to learn the truth. In 1990, the Russian press exposed the KGB cover-up at Sverdlovsk, and, two years later, Russian President Boris Yeltsin acknowledged that the Soviet Union had maintained a biological weapons program.
Back to China. However the coronavirus began (perhaps natural mutation or man-made assistance), only two things are certain. First, autocrats lie. Journalists are foolish to take any Chinese (or Russian, or Iranian, or Turkish) statement at face value. Second, China may have ratified the Biological Weapons Convention back in 1984, but there is substantial evidence that it is in violation of that commitment.
The events in Wuhan, regardless of the truth about the coronavirus, put Chinese laboratories in the limelight. For those who believe it important to gauge policy to reality rather than wishful thinking, that is positive. Indeed, while the press piles onto Cotton, it seems that political animus and point-scoring may be obscuring a far more important story.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
