Fu Cong, director-general of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs' arms control department in Beijing.

Beijing, August 26 (RHC)--Amid Washington's’ efforts to put as much a political spin as it can on the COVID-19 pandemic’s “origin,” China urges that the U.S.’s own laboratories be subject to investigations into the source of the phenomenon.

On Wednesday, a senior Chinese official denounced the U.S.’s “politicization” of the issue amid a pointed fanfare across American media about a report on the coronavirus’ birthplace that President Joe Biden received a copy of on Tuesday.

"Scapegoating China cannot whitewash the U.S.," Fu Cong, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' arms control department, told a briefing on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

The American media cited White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki as telling reporters that the intelligence community had been "working expeditiously" to prepare an unclassified version of the report for the public.  They also quoted U.S. officials as alleging obstruction on the part of China aimed at obscuring the source of the virus. 

A senior Chinese epidemiologist says the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of COVID-19.

Fu roundly rejected that Beijing could have launched any disinformation bid to that end.  "It is only fair that if the US insists that this is a valid hypothesis, they should do their turn and invite the investigation into their labs," he noted.

Also on Wednesday, the Chinese Embassy in Washington posted calls for World Health Organization investigations at Fort Detrick and at the University of North Carolina to its website. The diplomatic mission resorted to the measure after US media rejected its editorial submissions.

And on Tuesday, China's envoy to the United Nations also asked the head of the WHO for an investigation into U.S. labs, too.