{"id":40994,"date":"2020-03-14T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T09:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/america-china-in-war-of-words-over-who-lab-teched\/"},"modified":"2020-03-16T14:09:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T14:09:09","slug":"america-china-in-war-of-words-over-who-lab-teched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/america-china-in-war-of-words-over-who-lab-teched\/","title":{"rendered":"America, China in war of words over who lab-teched coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Stilwell, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia, issued a &#8220;stern representation&#8221; to Ambassador Cui Tiankai a day after foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted the conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;China is seeking to deflect criticism for its role in starting a global pandemic and not telling the world,&#8221; a State Department official said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Spreading conspiracy theories is dangerous and ridiculous. We wanted to put the government on notice we won&#8217;t tolerate it, for the good of the Chinese people and the world,&#8221; the official said.<\/p>\n<p>Zhao, in tweets in both Mandarin and English that gained wide traction on Chinese social media, a day earlier suggested that &#8220;patient zero&#8221; in the global pandemic may have come from the United States, not the Chinese city of Wuhan, where cases were first reported in late 2019.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-35199 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/gettyimages_643959858.0.jpg\" alt=\"The United States summoned China&#039;s ambassador after a senior official in Beijing tweeted the &quot;ridiculous&quot; suggestion that the U.S. military started the COVID-19 pandemic\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States on Friday summoned China&#8217;s ambassador after a senior official in Beijing tweeted the &#8220;ridiculous&#8221; suggestion that the U.S. military started the COVID-19 pandemic, the State Department said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-40994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40994"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=40994"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=40994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}