Commentary
Since the world’s first Ebola outbreak in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976, the world’s bioweapons chiefs recognized the importance of exploiting the Ebola virus’s 80 percent lethality.
China’s communist neighbor, the Soviet Union, may have been first off the mark by attempting to create a bioweapon that it called Ebolapox, which “would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox,” according to Kenneth Alibek, former chief scientist and first deputy director of the Soviet-era Biopreparat biowarfare agency. This bioweapon program remained active into the 1990s, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
China might not have been far behind Russia in seeking to exploit Ebola’s potential. According to the Indian Defence Review, in 2003, “the powerful Chinese Academy of Sciences announced in Paris that it wanted to acquire [a] class 4 Pathogen (P4) laboratory which could harbour the most dangerous viruses (Ebola, coronavirus, and H5N1 etc).”
That same year, according to Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) documents released to Canada’s Parliament, Chinese scientist Qiu Xiangguo began work at Canada’s high-security class 4 National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg that would yield critical Ebola breakthroughs for the Chinese military.
In 2012, CSIS revealed that Ms. Qiu was collaborating with an individual or entity that “works closely with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] to acquire Western technologies.” In 2013, officials from China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, known for its “biological weapons development,” nominated Ms. Qiu for a Chinese “international cooperation award” for work in Canada that “provided the Chinese side with the Ebola genetic sequence, which opened a door of convenience for China,” The Epoch Times previously reported.
China’s Ebola initiatives preceded by more than a decade the West Africa Ebola epidemic of 2014, when Ebola exploded into the public consciousness with fears of an epidemic in the United States and Europe that galvanized the world’s attention. Moreover, of all the deadly pathogens studied, Ebola was “foremost” in Ms. Qiu’s mind, according to Israel’s Dany Shoham, an expert on China’s biological warfare program, who characterized Ms. Qiu’s Ebola research as the priority pursued with “utmost attention.”
When the 2014 epidemic hit, China quickly positioned itself at the center of the international community’s response effort, providing $123 million toward the $1 billion fund that the United Nations requested to fight the epidemic—more than what most traditional Western donors, such as France and Canada, provided and far more than any country when measured using the U.N.’s per capita metric.
In addition to its cash contribution, China maximized its ability to document the Ebola virus’s deadly progression in real time, accept patients for observation, run tests, and collect Ebola samples by bringing in more than 1,000 medical and disease control experts from agencies such as the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, along with medical equipment, mobile laboratories, and ambulances.
The end of the West African epidemic in 2016 didn’t end the Chinese military’s focus on the Ebola virus. Instead, the focus shifted to Canada, where Ms. Qiu was lauded that year for collaborating with Maj. Gen. Zhang Shitao, director of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences. More plaudits came from Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, who headed the Chinese military’s research on biosafety, biodefense, and bioterrorism.
Maj. Gen. Chen, dubbed a “Wolf Warrior” and described in the Chinese press as the “nation’s ultimate expert” in biological and chemical weapon defenses, said that Ms. Qiu “used Canada’s Level 4 Biosecurity Laboratory as a base to assist China to improve its capability to fight highly-pathogenic pathogens ... and achieved brilliant results.” On Ms. Qiu’s orders, strains of the Ebola virus were shipped from the Winnipeg lab to China in 2019.
China is unlikely to be developing Ebola capabilities to protect its own population. The country has little to no susceptibility to an Ebola epidemic and also no history of Ebola.
Neither is the United States, which views communist China as its No. 1 military threat, a likely proximate target for the Chinese regime. Epidemiologists generally agree that the developed world faces little risk of an epidemic because Ebola is relatively easy to contain once an outbreak occurs: The West’s advanced infrastructure for sanitation and sewage, coupled with extensive health care facilities and tracking and quarantine controls, don’t provide the fertile ground that could potentially allow Ebola to thrive.
Taiwan, China’s enemy to the east, would also be an unlikely target for an Ebola attack because of its superior medical infrastructure. Taiwan’s health care system is reportedly ranked No. 1 in the world, and it has exceptional containment skills.
Not so for India, China’s enemy to the south, whose highly populated, impoverished, and infrastructure-challenged regions make it highly susceptible to an Ebola epidemic, according to Mr. Shoham. His view echoes that of Peter Piot, Ebola’s 1976 co-discoverer, who stated during the 2014 epidemic that an Ebola outbreak would be “especially challenging” for India, and Princeton University doctoral candidate Nikhil Pandhi, who starkly laid out India’s frailties in the Hindustan Times.
India has yet to address its systemic vulnerability to Ebola, a failing that is especially glaring given the decades-long hostilities between the two countries’ militaries and given the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which China learned that its biological agents could bring adversaries far and near to their knees without firing a single shot.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
