China’s Latest COVID-19 White Paper Signals Its Deepest Fear: Accountability, Say Analysts

Beijing’s new report doesn’t just deny responsibility for the pandemic—it reflects a calculated effort to shift blame and deflect potential legal consequences, analysts warn.

China’s ruling Communist Party has released a new white paper on COVID-19, but far from being a factual account, analysts argue it reveals the regime’s greatest fear: being held responsible for a global pandemic that has claimed millions of lives and devastated the world economy.

Titled “COVID‑19 Prevention, Control and Origins Tracing: China’s Actions and Stance”, the 23-page document aggressively redirects blame toward the United States, reasserts discredited theories, and directly rebuts a U.S. court ruling ordering China to pay $24 billion in damages.

“This is cognitive warfare at its core,” said Dr. Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army microbiologist and ex-director of the viral disease branch at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. “It’s designed to confuse, deflect, and protect the regime from accountability.”

A Preemptive Strike Before the Next Bargain

The timing of the white paper, issued April 30, is telling. It came just days after the launch of Covid.gov, the U.S. government’s new site on COVID-19 origins, which openly points to a possible lab origin in Wuhan linked to inadequate biosafety practices.

Analysts suggest that Beijing’s move is not purely defensive—it’s strategic.

“China sees this as a preemptive strike,” said Tang Jingyuan, a U.S.-based China affairs expert with a background in clinical medicine. “The regime knows that Washington may use the origin investigation as a bargaining chip in ongoing trade talks.”

U.S. and Chinese officials met in Geneva on May 10–11 and agreed to a 90-day tariff truce. Analysts believe Beijing’s report was aimed at neutralizing the lab-origin narrative before it could be weaponized diplomatically.

Pushing a Familiar but Debunked Narrative

A centerpiece of Beijing’s white paper is the long-discredited claim that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have leaked from Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army lab in Maryland. The report revives accusations that pneumonia-like illnesses in Virginia and the 2019 U.S. vaping crisis were early signs of COVID-19.

It also references a 2020 study that found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in blood samples collected in several U.S. states before January 2020. However, experts involved in that study noted that cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses could not be ruled out, and no conclusions about community spread could be drawn.

Tang called this narrative a textbook case of “accusation in a mirror”—a propaganda tactic where aggressors accuse opponents of the very actions they themselves have committed.

Turning Origins Tracing into a Geopolitical Smokescreen

Beijing’s strategy, experts say, is to transform a scientific inquiry into a geopolitical blame game. Whenever foreign governments demand transparency, Chinese state media responds with origin theories implicating those same nations.

This tactic has been used repeatedly. At various times, Chinese outlets have claimed the virus originated in Italy, the Netherlands, France, Australia, India, and Spain—everywhere but Wuhan. The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, described this pattern as a deliberate attempt to “flood the zone” with misinformation.

Leaked internal CCP documents obtained by The Epoch Times in 2020 revealed that authorities ordered Wuhan hospitals to review medical records as far back as October 2019—suggesting the outbreak likely began months earlier than China officially admits.

US Intelligence: “Natural Origin Would Have Surfaced By Now”

The U.S. government’s Covid.gov website, launched April 18, references intelligence findings released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in December 2024.

According to the report, there is no scientific evidence strongly supporting a natural origin. Instead, it points to genetic anomalies in the virus, its single-source outbreak pattern, and biosafety lapses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Crucially, intelligence suggests that WIV researchers fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, prior to the widely reported outbreak at a Wuhan seafood market.

Silencing Whistleblowers, Withholding Data

Despite its claims of transparency, Beijing’s white paper omits key facts. It makes no mention of the early whistleblowers silenced by Chinese authorities.

Among them was Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan who first raised the alarm in December 2019. He was detained, forced to sign a confession, and later died of COVID-19. His death sparked public outrage across China.

Another physician, Dr. Ai Fen, who shared early diagnostic findings, was similarly muzzled.

The CCP also continues to restrict access to raw patient data and virus samples, preventing independent investigations. The World Health Organization has repeatedly urged China to cooperate, calling data transparency “a scientific and moral imperative.”

The Missouri Lawsuit: A Legal Time Bomb for Beijing

The white paper devotes significant space to refuting a landmark case: the lawsuit filed by the state of Missouri against the Chinese government and affiliated institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Missouri accused China of suppressing critical information and stockpiling personal protective equipment during the early phase of the pandemic.

In March 2025, a U.S. federal judge issued a default judgment of over $24 billion after the Chinese defendants failed to appear in court.

Missouri’s attorney general has vowed to seek compensation by seizing Chinese-owned farmland and other assets within the United States.

China dismissed the lawsuit as a “politically motivated farce,” threatening retaliation if its interests are harmed. The white paper also criticized Missouri’s COVID-19 response, calling it “incompetent” while hailing China’s contribution to global pandemic control.

Yet, China faced international condemnation in early 2020 for restricting exports of protective gear and aggressively procuring global supplies—deepening the crisis for many countries.

Global Toll: A Crisis That Transcends Borders

According to the World Health Organization, more than 777 million confirmed infections and over 7 million deaths have been reported worldwide as of April 2025. However, independent analyses suggest the actual toll is much higher.

A peer-reviewed Lancet study in March 2022 estimated 18.2 million excess deaths globally for 2020 and 2021, with 1.13 million in the United States alone. This estimate excluded underreported fatalities from China.

The economic impact is equally staggering.

The IMF predicted in January 2021 that the pandemic would slash $22 trillion from global output between 2020 and 2025. A separate Cambridge University analysis forecasted global losses as high as $82 trillion under a prolonged depression scenario.

In the U.S., total economic damage was estimated at $14–18 trillion by the end of 2023, according to the USC Schaeffer Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

A Battle Over Truth and Justice

Analysts believe the tide is turning. Renewed U.S. attention to the Wuhan lab theory, particularly under the Trump administration, could pave the way for more legal actions like Missouri’s.

“The issue is no longer simply where the virus came from,” Lin said. “It’s what the Chinese regime did—or failed to do—that allowed it to become a global catastrophe.”

Tang agrees. He believes more U.S. states—and even other nations—may initiate legal proceedings, putting the CCP under “crushing legal and moral pressure.”

That fear, he says, is already visible in Beijing’s messaging: the higher the stakes, the harder the regime works to deflect and obscure.