Xi Jinping warns that Chinese laboratories handling deadly pathogens will face closer scrutiny

The Chinese president made the comments at the first-ever Politburo study session dedicated to biosecurity, which he identified as a national security issue

China has repeatedly denied that Covid-19 was the result of a laboratory accident and the topic has become yet another flashpoint with the United States

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The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been at the centre of the controversial lab leak theory. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:22pm, 30 Sep 2021Updated: 8:31pm, 30 Sep 2021

China must increase its oversight of laboratories handling dangerous pathogens, President Xi Jinping has told the Communist Party leadership.

Biosecurity is an important part of national security and a force that “affects and can even reshape the world”, Xi told the Politburo, the party’s top policymaking body on Wednesday, according to state news agency Xinhua.

It was the Politburo’s first ever group study session specifically focused on biosecurity, highlighting the importance the Chinese leadership has attached to the issue since the onset of the pandemic.

According to Xinhua: “Xi Jinping emphasised that, at present, traditional biosecurity issues and new biosecurity risks are superimposed on each other, and biological threats from overseas and domestic biological risks are intertwined.”

Xi’s warning comes at a time when China and the US are engaged in a war of words over the origins of Covid-19.

Some members of Donald Trump’s administration repeatedly accused China of engineering or leaking the coronavirus from a lab in Wuhan, where the first Covid-19 outbreak was recorded.