The novel coronavirus origin-tracing investigation report the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued on Friday does not rule out the possibility of the virus jumping from nature to humans or leaking from a laboratory, and stresses that Chinese officials didn't know about the virus before the pandemic broke out.

The report has surprised many by not saying the virus originated in China.

Since last year, when previous US president Donald Trump claimed the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan and even called the novel coronavirus the "Chinese virus", his supporters have been spreading the conspiracy theory that the SARS-CoV-2 originated in China. And as the investigation doesn't affirm their claim, they are angry with the report. An editorial in the New York Post even said "Biden's intelligence agencies bow to Beijing".

Many Chinese people, too, are surprised by the conclusion of the investigation, because they expected the US intelligence agencies to point the finger at China and, in the absence of reliable proof, fabricate evidence to claim that the virus originated in China. After all, the US intelligence agencies' history is one of lying and cheating, as former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said.

In 2003, in order to find an excuse to invade Iraq and topple the Saddam Hussein regime, the US administration claimed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). At a United Nations meeting, then US secretary of state Colin Powell even displayed a small glass bottle filled with an unknown white powder to emphasize that the United States had "conclusive" proof of Iraq possessing WMDs. But later the claim proved false, because despite searching all corners of Iraq after overthrowing the Saddam Hussein government, US intelligence officials found no WMDs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin even ridiculed Powell saying the glass bottle in his hand was probably filled with washing powder.

Even after Trump was elected US president, the Democratic Party and many US media accused him of "colluding with Russia" to win the presidential election. The FBI played a big role in what came to be known as "Russiagate", though it couldn't prove the authenticity of the contents of its reports on Trump-Russia collusion.

Since US intelligence agencies use false information to even attack the US president, what can stop them from using fake evidence to target other countries? That's why it wouldn't have been surprising to see US intelligence agencies fabricating evidence in the origin-tracing report to show China as the source of the virus.

The US intelligence agencies didn't directly blame China for the virus, because there is abundant evidence on COVID-19-like cases occurring in other parts of the world before the virus was detected in China.

According to media reports, researchers in Spain, Italy and Brazil found traces of the novel coronavirus in wastewater samples collected in 2019, while Japanese researchers identified the virus's trace in blood samples taken the same year. And these countries reported COVID-19-like cases before the first case in China was reported from Wuhan.

In the US, researchers found COVID-19 antibodies in more than 100 blood samples collected from December 2019 to January 2021, proving that the first COVID-19 case in the US might have occurred in December 2019－one month before the first confirmed case announced by the US administration. Also, Michael Melham, mayor of Belleville in New Jersey, said in April 2020 that he might have contracted a new flu virus (later identified as the novel coronavirus) in November 2019, and later medical tests showed he did have COVID-19 antibodies.

In the face of so much factual evidence, it was extremely difficult for US intelligence agencies to use fabricated evidence to prove that the virus originated in China. Some news reports suggest that in order to obtain solid "evidence", US intelligence agencies even hacked into the computers of the Institute of Virology in Wuhan to obtain "vital" information. But they couldn't find any evidence to prove the virus originated in China. Which once again shows China has nothing to hide.

That US President Joe Biden asked US intelligence agencies, not scientists, to trace the origins of the virus in 90 days shows Washington is using the origin-tracing probe as a political tool to fulfill its narrow goals. Did Biden do so to offset the tremendous pressure the Republican Party and Trump supporters are putting on him?

More important, the pandemic situation in the US is still serious. Along with the administration's failure to contain the pandemic, the hasty withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has seriously damaged the US' international image. The fact that the virus could have originated in the US and the administration is ordering different probes to divert the US public's attention from real issues has further soiled the US' image. In short, the virus origin-tracing and unsuccessful pandemic-prevention and control measures have exposed the duplicity of the US.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

The author is an assistant researcher of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

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