On February 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing before the opening of the , where the Russian team is competing under a neutral flag as a penalty for a massive state-sponsored Olympics doping scandal.
Xi and Putin on a wide range of global issues. Russia declared its commitment to the “One China” principle, stating that Taiwan is “an integral part of China” and that Moscow opposes “Taiwan independence in any form.”
China backed Russia’s resistance to NATO expansion. However, the j did not specifically mention the Kremlin’s ongoing military buildup around Ukraine, or its past annexation of Crimea and military machinations in the Donbass region.
Xi and Putin did, however, pointedly attack the United States' record of compliance with chemical and biological weapons agreements.
From their joint statement:
This characterization is highly misleading.
China and Russia routinely accuse the U.S. military of developing and using biological weapons both domestically and abroad. Fact-checkers repeatedly have debunked this disinformation narrative.
An example is Russia’s recurring misrepresentation of the U.S.-funded Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia, popularly known as the “Lugar Lab” after its patron, the late U.S. Senator Richard Lugar.
Here are a few past claims with links to detailed fact checks:
: “The Lugar Lab produced ” – the deadly Soviet-era family of nerve agents used to poison Alexey Navalny.
: “ was an act of U.S. bioterrorism, and the virus that causes the illness was in Lugar Lab.”
: “U.S. biologists conduct on Georgians in the Lugar Lab.”
: “The Lugar Lab spreads among humans and animals.”
The U.S. Embassy in Georgia Polygraph.info in 2018 that, “Lugar Center’s mission is to contribute to the protection of citizens from biological threats, promote public and animal health through infectious disease detection, epidemiological surveillance and research for the benefit of Georgia, the Caucasus region and the global community.” At that time, the embassy said, the lab had never conducted any clinical trials. More on the continuing campaign against the .
Russia’s chem-bio against the U.S. has a years-long history. China’s attacks multiplied after the coronavirus pandemic in China’s Wuhan province raised questions about whether Chinese authorities were slow to report the virus or withheld information, particularly because of suspicions concerning research activities at the .
The of the SARS-2-Cov virus behind the pandemic remain a matter of. Nonetheless, Chinese officials and state media have made numerous false accusations, particularly attacking the U.S. Army’s bioresearch laboratory in , Maryland:
: “AIDS/HIV made in the U.S.”
: “SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was in the U.S. Army biolab in .” And other -related claims…
: “Ralph Baric, a top coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, North Carolina,the virus.”
: “The brought coronavirus to .”
China and Russia have targeted disinformation at the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (), which is tasked with evaluating and eliminating challenges posed by weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.
A DTRA branch called the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR), which focuses on biological threats, has been frequently targeted by “certain countries” that “try to falsely undermine and discredit the program's efforts,” DTRA said in a recent .
The United States unilaterally its biological weapons program in 1969 and destroyed all biological warefare agents in 1971-1973. The U.S. currently conducts related research but only as part of its biodefenseprogram, according to.
Both the U.S. and Russia developed and stockpiled chemical weapons during the Cold War era. By 1968, the U.S. stockpile reached some 40,000 tons. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has never used chemical weapons in warfare.
The United States started disposing of its chemical weapons in the late 1960s, decades before it joined the International Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty in 1997.
From 1967 to 1970, the United States loaded thousands of tons of chemical weapons on old ships and sank them in the sea. This raised environmental concerns, and in 1970 the U.S. Congress passed a law directing that the Defense Department’s plans for destroying chemical weapons must be reviewed and approved by public health agencies to ensure the safety to people, animals and the environment.
