{"id":4233,"date":"2013-04-10T07:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T07:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4233"},"modified":"2013-04-10T07:50:49","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T07:50:49","slug":"bird-flu-or-the-american-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4233","title":{"rendered":"Bird flu or the American flu? Chinese allege ‘biological warfare attack’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Chinese Air Force officer on Saturday accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu now afflicting parts of China as a biological warfare attack.<\/p>\n

People\u2019s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu said the United States released the H7N9 bird flu virus into China in an act of biological warfare, according to a posting on his blog on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The charge was first reported in the state-run Guangzhou newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily<\/em> and then picked up by several news outlets in Asia.<\/p>\n

State Department spokesman Jason Rebholz dismissed the claim. \u201cThere is absolutely no truth to these allegations,\u201d he told the Washington<\/em> Free Beacon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Seven deaths from the bird flu outbreak were reported as of Tuesday in state-run Chinese media. As many as 24 people reportedly were infected by the disease in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.<\/p>\n

Chinese authorities are trying to calm public fears of a major epidemic, claiming there is no evidence the virus can be transmitted between humans.<\/p>\n

The government also is claiming that the outbreak is not related to the recent discovery of thousands of dead pigs floating in a river in China.<\/p>\n

The accusation of U.S. biological warfare against China comes as the Pentagon is seeking closer military relations with China. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to travel to China for talks with Chinese military leaders later this month.<\/p>\n

Dai is a military strategist who in the past has been outspoken in seeking to foment conflict between China and the United States. He told the Global Times<\/em> in August that China should go to war over U.S. support for Japan\u2019s claims to the disputed Senkaku Islands.<\/p>\n

Writing on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site akin to Twitter, Dai stated that the new bird flu strain was designed as a biological weapon similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which he also claimed was developed as a U.S. bio-weapon, that affected the country in 2003.<\/p>\n

According to Dai\u2019s posting, the new flu outbreak should not be a cause for concern. \u201cThe national leadership should not pay too much attention to it,\u201d the PLA lecturer at the National Defense University wrote. \u201cOr else, it\u2019ll be like in 2003 with SARS!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dai said that even if \u201ca few may die\u201d from the flu outbreak, it will not equal one-thousandth of the deaths caused by vehicle accidents in China.<\/p>\n

Dai in the past has called for China to punish the United States for U.S. arms sales to rival Taiwan, by selling arms to U.S. enemies. \u201cChina recognizes that a few perfunctory protests will not have any effect,\u201d Dai said in 2010. \u201cChina can\u2019t directly sanction American arms companies since they did not do business with China \u2026 but China can sanction companies that are doing business with China directly, like Boeing or General Electric.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dai also has said the United States has used crises with North Korea and offers of cooperation on the issue as a plot to drive a wedge between Beijing and its fraternal communist ally.<\/p>\n

Dai also has said U.S. efforts to counter Chinese espionage and intelligence-gathering were part of a U.S. \u201cplot theory\u201d of \u201cwestern countries threatening others by [releasing] information gained through spying in order to damage the reputations of other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

A State Department official said China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 31 about its first detected human cases of H7N9 infection.\u00a0Fourteen cases were confirmed by the WHO by April 5, of which six were fatal. The organization said there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.<\/p>\n

\u201cU.S. Embassy Beijing and U.S. Consulate Shanghai are monitoring the situation, working closely with counterparts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the Beijing and Shanghai\u00a0municipal governments,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

The colonel\u2019s accusation provoked a widespread response on Chinese websites. One post in reaction joked that Dai\u2019s comment about auto deaths must mean that the United States and Germany are responsible for a conspiracy to produce cars, according to a report in Hong Kong\u2019s South China Morning Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Luo Changping, deputy editor of Caijing, said most PLA soldiers would not support Dai\u2019s comments and he urged the colonel to resign and apologize to those who have died from the current bird flu outbreak.<\/p>\n

A defiant Dai then said in a new posting Sunday that \u201cit is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, a group of fake American devils are attacking me,\u201d he wrote in another post. \u201cI will not retreat even half a step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysts say the colonel\u2019s remarks are a reflection of the growing xenophobic atmosphere within the Chinese military that views the United States as its main enemy.<\/p>\n

Former State Department intelligence analyst John Tkacik said China\u2019s military was largely to blame for mishandling the 2003 outbreak of SARS. Tkacik said there was speculation when the epidemic began that \u201cthe PLA suspects SARS had emanated from its own biological laboratories and was all the more eager to keep it secret.\u201d China is known to have a covert biological arms program.<\/p>\n

\u201cCol. Dai Xu is a shameless liar when he accuses the United States of using bio weapons,\u201d Tkacik told the Free Beacon<\/em>. \u201cHe\u2019s probably motivated by a desire to exculpate the PLA for their mishandling of the epidemic\u2014no doubt most Chinese have happily forgotten the episode\u2014as much as by a cynical xenophobia.\u00a0But, that\u2019s what passes for deep strategic thought at China\u2019s National Defense University these days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has been trying with varying success to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of a strategy aimed at building trust. However, China\u2019s military leaders believe the U.S. offers of closer ties are a ruse designed to contain China\u2019s growing military buildup.<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke by phone with China\u2019s Defense Minister Gen. Chang Wanquan on April 2. Chang is the No. 4 defense official after Chinese President Xi Jinping and two other generals who run the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party\u2019s ultimate power organ.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe leaders both expressed their intention to work together to continue to build a military-to-military relationship that serves the vision of both President Obama and President Xi,\u201d Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement<\/a> after the call.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe secretary discussed the importance of focusing on areas of sustained dialogue, practical areas of cooperation, and risk reducing measures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

U.S. ties with China are strained due to China\u2019s reluctance to rein in neighboring North Korea.<\/p>\n

China provides North Korea with large amounts of fuel oil and other goods. However, Beijing has not taken steps to pressure Pyongyang using its economic leverage during the ongoing crisis.<\/p>\n

The flu has lit up China\u2019s thriving Internet, according to analysts. Over 945,600 microblog postings addressed the flu between April 8 and 9. Since the outbreak began some seven days ago, between 1.3 million and 3 million postings were put online on outlets including Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of users expressed doubts about the official Shanghai municipal government\u2019s denial of any link between the dead pigs found floating last month in the region\u2019s Huangpu River.<\/p>\n

The proximity to the initial outbreak in Shanghai and the river has led to speculation that the pig deaths may have been linked to the flu virus jumping from animals to humans.<\/p>\n

That speculation was fueled by reports that one of the victims of the flu was a pig butcher.<\/p>\n

The avian flu strain is similar to an earlier outbreak with a significant difference: The current strain does not kill the birds it infects, making it more difficult to identify infected poultry.<\/p>\n

The Shanghai government waited 20 days before announcing the first H7N9 infection on March 31. – The Washington Free Beacon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Chinese Air Force officer on Saturday accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu now afflicting parts of China as a biological warfare attack. People\u2019s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu said the United States released the H7N9 bird flu virus into China in an act of biological warfare, according … Continue reading “Bird flu or the American flu? Chinese allege ‘biological warfare attack’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,123],"tags":[331,2668,144,2669,745],"class_list":["post-4233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-biological-warfare","tag-bird-flu","tag-china","tag-h7n9-bird-flu-virus","tag-usa"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/birdflu.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}