Something worse than Covid to hit the US: China expert warns
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New York: Just a few days ago the US authorities nabbed two Chinese scientists for smuggling a toxic fungus into the country.
Now a US-based expert on China warns that something worse than Covid to befall the US, reminiscent of controversies surrounding the origins of Covid outbreak.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and her boyfriend Zunyong Liu, 34, reportedly smuggled into the country what the US Justice Department said the fungus classified in scientific literature as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’, NDTV reported.
'Fusarium graminearum' is a dangerous crop-destroying fungus that can cause ‘head blight’, which is a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice.
Alongside incurring billions of dollars in losses, the fungus can cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.
The Chinese couple is reported to have previously worked on the fungus back home in China.
Although they were caught red-handed, the US expert on China affairs Gordon G Chang equated the couple’s action to waging war against the US.
Chang warned the US of facing ‘something worse’ than Covid unless the US takes measures to cut off ties with China.
When Covid-19 outbreak shocked the world, a controversy was also erupted with experts accusing China of having engineered the virus in one of its labs.
Chang told Fox News that the Chinese couple arrested for smuggling fungus into the US should be sent to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, citing that China’s state publication People’ Daily in an editorial in May 2019 declared a people’s war on the US.
‘We are Americans, so we think we are entitled to ignore the propaganda of hostile regimes. But for a communist party, that phrase has great resonance. What they are doing with their strident anti-Americanism is creating a justification to strike our country. This means the couple, for instance, should be sent to Guantanamo,’ Chang was quoted as saying.
The expert on China further said that ‘In 2020, Americans in all 50 states received from China seeds that were unsolicited. I think that was an attempt to plant invasive species into the US. And then this year, Timu, the online Chinese retailer, sent seeds to Americans unsolicited’.
Chang, who is the author of 'China Is Going to War', claimed that the only way to stop these activities was to ‘sever relations with China’, adding that ‘We are going to get hit really hard, not just with Covid, not just with fentanyl, but perhaps with something worse.’
