No big surprise here. The USA also has had biological weapons ambitions for years.
China had made clear its biological weapons ambitions long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Wenstrup together with Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) released a report (pdf) on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Dec. 14.
“Our State Department has put things out over the past, even going back to 2005, that China is interested in offensive bioweapons,” Wenstrup told the “Capitol Report” program on NTD, the sister media outlet of the Epoch Times, on Dec. 16.
The lawmaker singled out the work of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s Fifth Institute of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), the military’s top medical research body.
“In 2005, the U.S. State Department publicly stated the U.S. assessment that China also operates an offensive biological weapons program, specifically identifying two Chinese entities as likely involved, one of which is the Fifth Institute. In a 2006 declaration of compliance with the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, China acknowledged that the Fifth Institute specifically conducts research on SARS coronaviruses,” the report reads.