Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian has criticized the United States intelligence community report on the origin of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) as “mendacious” that was made to scapegoat China.

“It is a mendacious report made up for political purposes. Its aim is not to get to the bottom of the origins of the virus. What the US is really up to is to shift the responsibility of its failure in pandemic response domestically and scapegoat China,” Huang said in a two-page statement in response to the US intelligence community report released on Friday, Aug. 27.

Huang alleged that the US administration, in disregard of science and in favor of political manipulation, has persistently instructed its intelligence community to compile a report on the origins of COVID-19 and released a statement “slandering and attacking China”.

“The global community stands firmly against such behavior,” said the Chinese diplomat, adding that since the outbreak of the pandemic, China has shared its first-hand response experience with the international community in a timely manner and provided anti-pandemic assistance to the world.

He maintained that like other countries, China is also a “victim” of COVID-19 since the virus “knows no borders and does not distinguish between races”.

“We all hope to find out the origin of the virus and cut off its transmission as early as possible. China will continue to work with the international community to resist the setbacks of politicalizing origin-tracing and bring it back to the right track of scientific cooperation,” the Chinese envoy said.

All along, he said China has taken a scientific attitude as it engages in global cooperation on science-based origin-tracing, noting that they even invited World Health Organization (WHO) experts to China twice for origin-tracing research.

Last March, a WHO study concluded that the virus was most likely transmitted from bats to humans and cited that it was “extremely unlikely” it leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

Huang said the joint WHO-China joint study team provided what he described as the “most authoritative, professional and science-based conclusions” on origin-tracing.

“Without providing any evidence, the US has cooked up one story after another to defame and accuse China,” he said.

Instead, Huang accused the United States for not being "transparent, responsible and cooperative" on the issue of the virus origin, claiming that the US has been refusing to respond to the international community's doubts on the Fort Detrick biolab and the more than 200 American overseas bases for biological experiments.

"One cannot whitewash its wrongdoings by smearing the other. The onus is on the US to give the world an answer," he said.

On Friday, the US intelligence community released an “inconclusive” report on the origins of the COVID-19 and admitted to being divided on whether the virus came from a human through contact with an infected animal or that the virus leaked from a laboratory.

“After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of Covid-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” the US intelligence agencies said in the report.