US President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended calling the coronavirus spreading rapidly across the world the “Chinese Virus” and said that he is pushing back against the false narrative of China that the US military did this.
“Well, China was putting out information which was false that our military did this to them. That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said I had to call it where it came from. It did come from China,” the President told reporters at a White House news conference.
“So I think it’s a very accurate term. I didn’t appreciate the fact that China was saying that our military gave it to them. Our military did not give it to anybody,” Trump said.
“No, I don’t see that at all and I think China has every incentive to make sure that things work well. China wants to make sure that things work very well,” Trump said.
The US President said he did not expect China not honouring its trade deal commitment of buying things from the US as a result of the coronavirus.
“Well they need our product very badly… We have a good relationship with China. We have a signed agreement. They’re going to be buying and they have been buying a lot of product,” he said.
The US and China have sparred over the origin of the virus for days, with a Chinese official promoting conspiracy theories claiming it was brought to China by the US army and Beijing accusing American officials of stigmatizing an entire nation.
Trump’s allies had previously referred to the pandemic as the “Chinese coronavirus”, but Beijing said it was “strongly indignant” over the phrase, which it called “a kind of stigmatization”.
The US should “immediately stop its unjustified accusations against China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing.
A commentary by the official Xinhua news agency said using “racist and xenophobic names to cast blame for the outbreak on other countries can only reveal politicians’ irresponsibility and incompetence which will intensify virus fears.”
The war of words reignited diplomatic tensions between the two countries, which have tussled over trade and other disputes since Trump took office.
The World Health Organization said more cases and deaths had been reported in the rest of the world than in China.The new coronavirus was first detected late last year, with China’s own health officials initially saying its source was a live animal market in the central city of Wuhan, whose government had initially tried to cover up the outbreak.
But China has sought to distance itself from the virus, saying the origin is still unknown, while seeking global goodwill by offering aid to countries facing serious outbreaks.
