China lashes out at US over report of Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign

Beijing calls on Washington to ‘stop fabricating and disseminating false information against other countries’

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According to a Reuters report, the Pentagon tried to discredit Chinese company Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:31pm, 17 Jun 2024Updated: 3:07am, 18 Jun 2024

Beijing has called on Washington to “stop fabricating and disseminating false information” in response to a report that the Pentagon ran a secret campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic to discredit China’s vaccines.

“The facts have proven time and again that the United States has consistently spread false information through the manipulation of social media, poisoned the public opinion environment and smeared the image of other countries,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing on Monday.

“China firmly opposes this.”

He said Washington should “set its mind right, shoulder its responsibilities as a great power, and stop fabricating and disseminating false information against other countries”.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian accused the US of spreading false information. Photo: dpa

Lin was responding to a media query about a Reuters investigation published on Friday that said the Pentagon had tried to discredit the quality of Chinese face masks, test kits and Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac’s vaccine.

The shot was the first Covid-19 jab to become available in the Philippines, which had struggled to source vaccines during the pandemic.