China Advances Its Biowarfare Program Through Infiltration of US Virus Labs: Retired US Army Colonel

Chinese scientists, with military links, infiltrate American virology research institutions and feed the research results to the Chinese military to benefit China’s development of biological weapons, said retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D.

In China, there is no difference between military and civilian research, and in 2016 the Chinese regime even mandated the fusion of both types of research even if they are carried out by different institutions, Sellin said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program. 00:50

“China’s biological warfare program exists at three levels.” 00:50

“The first level is the secret military level and this is composed of military research centers and military hospitals.” 00:50

“The second layer, which is fused to the first layer, are China’s universities, their so-called civilian research centers like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and also some of the biotech companies in China.” 00:50

The third level is comprised of international universities and research labs, he said. 00:50

The second level, civilian research, accesses this third level and then feeds the results from the collaboration on international programs between Chinese scientists residing abroad and local scientists, back into the first level—the military level, Sellin explained. 00:50

The collaboration on research between American institutions and Chinese institutions started in 1979 with the agreement signed by then-President Jimmy Carter and the Chinese regime leader Deng Xiaoping, which allowed Chinese scientists to come to the United States to study and work, Sellin said. 02:48

Many in the first wave of Chinese scientists who came to the United States to get trained were from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese military, he said. Some of them stayed in the United States, even becoming permanent residents or citizens, he added. 02:48

“During this time, they maintain collaboration with scientists in mainland China, including scientists from the People’s Liberation Army, so I call it scientific chain migration. Those in the initial wave, who established themselves in laboratories in the United States began inviting other scientists from China, again, from the People’s Liberation Army and also other research centers in China, to the United States.” 02:48

“Over the last 30 years, they’ve created a critical mass of scientists who continue to work with scientists back in mainland China.” 02:48

Chinese Bio Warfare Research in America

Some research of certain scientists with the dual U.S.–China affiliation has been funded by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sellin, who previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

This dual affiliation is often stated in their publications in scientific journals, he said. 02:48

For example, Shibo Jiang conducted a study with another Chinese scientist, which was directly funded by the Chinese government and a private Chinese biotech company, while Shibo Jiang was also funded by NIAID to conduct U.S. biodefense research, Sellin said in his newsletter.

In 2014, Shibo Jiang co-authored a scientific paper as an affiliate of both the Key Lab of Molecular Virology of the Shanghai Medical College and the Kimball Research Institute of the New York Blood Center.

“One of the hotbeds of China’s infiltration of U.S. universities is the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which also has a U.S. defense research center there and a level four biosecurity lab as well.” 02:48

“There have been many Chinese scientists, some of whom came from the People’s Liberation Army, who have worked there.” 02:48

The Galveston National Laboratory was conceived and funded in 2003 by Fauci’s NIAID in response to biothreats that emerged in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It began collaborating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in 2013 on training WIV scientists and conducting joint research programs.

There are also Chinese scientists with ties to the Chinese military working in the U.S. military scientific institutions doing research in various fields, and holding very sensitive positions, Sellin said. “It’s been going on for years.” He questioned two people in authority about this situation but had not received any response. 09:21

Those scientists maintain contact with scientific institutions in China, visit China, and give presentations at universities there, Sellin said. 07:39

Variety of Biological Weapons

“There’s a spectrum of biological weapons,” some of which are very lethal while others less so, Sellin explained. According to Chinese military doctrine, biological weapons, which are highly infectious but with low lethality, can be used in pre-war conditions “to debilitate a society or to debilitate another military.”  13:25

The COVID-19 virus is a prototypical biological weapon that China has been trying to develop since 2004, Sellin said. 13:25

COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Chinese military documents also state “that these weapons should be designed, such that you have plausible deniability, that the presence of these viruses can be blamed on nature,” he said. “That’s the whole story of the COVID-19 virus. … The research that China’s doing, even the publicly available research, points back to a biological warfare program.” 13:25

 “China is waging a war against the United States, and COVID-19 was a type of biological weapon that was designed for pre-war conditions.” 15:43

Regardless of whether its release was accidental or intentional, it debilitated the United States economy for two years, and caused enormous disruption and social discord in the country, Sellin said. The country is weakened, which “allows China to take advantage of the situation in a war-like state,” he added. 15:43

 “I think China’s military learned a great deal about our response to [the COVID-19 pandemic] or our lack of response to it, and the effect it had on our society.” 23:06

Since the Chinese regime plans “to take over the world,” it also works on much more lethal viruses as well, which can cause death rates of up to 70 or 80 percent of the population, Sellin said. “They are developing a wide variety of biological weapons to be used under certain circumstances.” 23:06

‘Recipe for COVID-19’ Funded by American Taxpayers

 “The American taxpayers are actually funding China’s research programs” to the point that one can think of America’s virus research programs today as merely an extension of Chinese programs, in particular, their biological warfare program,” Sellin said. 17:13

In 2018, Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, dubbed the “bat woman,” submitted, along with two other scientists, an application for a research grant to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Sellin said. 17:13

He said that the description of proposed research in that application “reads like a recipe for creating COVID-19.” 17:13

The application was rejected by DARPA because it involved dangerous “gain of function” experiments that would create new human-infecting viruses, and the research had the clear potential for dual use within a bioweapons development,” Sellin wrote. “DARPA, however, left the door open for partial funding.”

“Gain of function research is defined as when a naturally-occurring virus is genetically or otherwise manipulated to make it either more contagious, more lethal, or both.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), admitted in a letter that it funded gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke, hosts of “Truth Over News” on EpochTV.

Sellin said that he considers the 2018 research application the “smoking gun” of the laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus because the experiments described in the application include the insertion of a furin protease cleavage site into new viruses that would be created in these experiments. 17:13

This furin protease cleavage site does not exist in any virus from which the COVID-19 virus could have evolved, Sellin said. “It is unnatural insertion into COVID-19.” 17:13

The furin protease cleavage site is a very small structure in the virus that facilitates its infectivity and lethality, Sellin explained. 20:31

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

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Ella Kietlinska is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. and world politics.

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Joshua Philipp is an award-winning investigative reporter with The Epoch Times and host of EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program. He is a recognized expert on unrestricted warfare, asymmetrical hybrid warfare, subversion, and historical perspectives on today’s issues. His 10-plus years of research and investigations on the Chinese Communist Party, subversion, and related topics give him unique insight into the global threat and political landscape.