For long, the world has been harboring the suspicion that the COVID-19 virus that brought the entire humanity to a halt was a “deliberately engineered bio-weapon.” Now, an open-source intelligence report has indicated that Beijing is making advancements in its dual-use biological research capabilities, and applications are being created for the Chinese army’s germ warfare programs.
The report indicates that Beijing, which previously depended on international connectivity to get its hands on technology and specialized knowledge in the field of virology and nanotechnology, has become self-sufficient.
At one point, China’s domestic research was lagging beyond key Western countries, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Russia. However, now China has been able to establish itself as a world leader with a ‘first-mover advantage’ across several strategic technology domain areas.
The report by the Chinese Communist Party Biothreats Initiative, a think tank, lists the dangerous experiments the Chinese researchers are conducting. On January 4, 2024, the report said, “arguably the most high-risk SARS-CoV-2 experiment to date” was conducted.
The experiment involved a pangolin coronavirus isolate, GX P2V C7, which caused 100 percent mortality in a humanized mice model.
The research was carried out by the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter (BAIC-SM) Sciences and Engineering, which is part of the Beijing University of Chemical Technology.
“The researchers then tried to take the ‘lethal’ tone out of their report with a new January 24, 2024 version that attempted to justify their study as an approach for vaccine or drug development studies,” the research notes.
The report considers China’s continued high-risk pathogen research on SARS-CoV-2 is “problematic.” This demonstrates that Beijing assigns “a high degree of strategic importance to serial passaging experiments continuing to be done in China despite being banned across the West.”
And the experiments have continued despite the SARS-CoV-2 virus being directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people across the world.
Earlier in August 2023, a study conducted by a team at the Wuhan Institute of Technology (WIT) was published in the American Society of Microbiology’s Journal of Virology.
“This study generated a new coronavirus that has very high lethality in aged mice and has strong potential to effectively use human ACE2 receptors. The data about the pathogenicity of this new pathogen in humanized mice is intentionally omitted in this new report, or just cannot be revealed,” the report contended.
It cannot be a coincidence that a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology claimed in June 2023 that the deadly SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, was deliberately engineered as a “bioweapon” by China.
In an interview conducted by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng, researcher Chao Shao claimed that the researchers were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading among various species, including people, Jerusalem Post reported.
Chao Shao also talked about an incident involving another researcher at the institute named Shan Chao. Shan Chao has admitted to being provided with four strains of coronavirus by a superior to test and determine which one had the greatest potential to infect multiple species, including humans.
Researchers from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science (HIPS) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have developed a smart DNA molecular nanorobot model. China claims the model innovatively proposes a non-linear gathering ‘siege’ of biological targets, allowing advanced signal amplification and intelligent targeted drug delivery.
“The study suggests this technology has potential applications in biosensing, bioimaging, and drug delivery. However, there are risks associated with this advancement. The ability of nanorobots to transport biological agents directly to target cells with such precision could also have dual-use applications, especially when considering the established linkages between HIPS and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” the report said.
The combination of nanotechnology with cyber and biological domains could lead to the creation of sophisticated hybrid weapons. Nanoscale devices could be deployed to infiltrate computer systems, disrupt communication networks, and remotely control biological agents, blurring the lines between traditional military and cyber warfare.
Bat Coronavirus Research Accelerates In Wuhan
In August 2023, a study was published in the American Society of Microbiology’s Journal of Virology that announced that the infamous Wuhan Institute of Technology generated a new mouse-adapted coronavirus strain named SMA1901.
The SMA1901 strain was generated by serial passaging the original virus strain (bat SARSr-CoV rRsSHC014S) in young and aged mice 19 times and intentionally selecting more pathogenic strains at every passage.
In this study, the young mice infected with the SMA1901 strain exhibited “a rapid loss of body weight (up to 10% of their body weight) 4 days post-infection”. Viral RNA was detected in multiple organs, primarily in the lungs, trachea, and turbinates, but also in the heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, intestine, and brain. While the young infected mice demonstrated substantial weight loss, inflammation, and increased viral titers in the respiratory tract, no mortality was observed.
However, aged mice infected with SMA1901 exhibited significant body weight loss starting at two days post-infection. Most of the aged mice demonstrated a 25 percent reduction in body weight.
Within three days post-infection, the mice showed mortality, and by seven days post-infection, only about 15% of the aged mice survived (2 out of 15). High numbers of viral RNA were also found in the respiratory tract, with the mice exhibiting signs of severe pneumonia.
On the face of it, the research appears to be just a study for bat coronavirus. However, the virus strain used to generate SMA1901 is known to strongly interact with both human ACE2 and mouse ACE2 receptors. That is to say that the original virus before SMA1901 has the potential to directly infect human cells.
- Ritu Sharma has been a journalist for over a decade, writing on defense, foreign affairs, and nuclear technology.
- The author can be reached at ritu.sharma (at) mail.com
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