Biden walks away when asked if he would pressure Chinese Xi over COVID origins

President Biden on Monday chose not to answer a question from The Post about whether he would get transparency from China on the origins of COVID-19 before a virtual summit with President Xi Jinping.

Biden looked directly at a reporter as he listened to the White House aisle investigation, before walking away after an event honoring NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks. He answered other questions about his legislative agenda.

Moments earlier, while entertaining the basketball team, Biden recalled visiting a basketball court on his first visit to Beijing to meet Xi, the Communist “life president.”

“The first time I went to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping, he put me on a basketball court. I’m not like those guys, ”Biden told NBA players. “I can play a bit, but he put me on a basketball court. I say to myself, everywhere in the world I go traveling the world of basketball.

Biden often speaks publicly about his engagement with Xi while he was vice president from 2009 to 2017, but he hardly ever mentions pushing China to be transparent about early data on COVID-19, which has killed more than 750 000 Americans.

The U.S. intelligence community said in August that it was possible that the virus had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, calling the theory one of two “plausible” explanations, in addition to a natural origin in animals.

President Biden heard but didn’t answer my question on how he’s going to get China to be transparent about the origins of COVID-19

Biden plans virtual summit with Chinese President Xi this year, but has said very little about promoting virus transparency pic.twitter.com/rIBc5hZtAL

– Steven Nelson (@ stevennelson10) November 8, 2021

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed on Monday that Biden intends to meet with Xi virtually this month or in December. The White House declined to say whether Biden pressured Xi for transparency during a 90-minute call on September 9.

“We have an agreement in principle with the PRC that President Xi and President Biden will have a virtual bilateral meeting before the end of the year. This is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage competition between our countries, ”said Jean-Pierre.

Documents released in September by The Intercept revealed that U.S. health officials research indirectly funded at the Wuhan laboratory who sought to better understand viruses by manipulating them, including modifying three bat coronaviruses distinct from COVID-19 and finding that they became much more infectious in “humanized” mice when human-like receptors were added to them . The documents reinforced a theory that ‘gain-of-function’ research may have caused the pandemic.

The White House Biden initially resisted launching a US examination of the origins of the pandemic this year, deferring instead to the World Health Organization. But in May, the president ordered the 90-day review by a spy agency after the Wall Street Journal reported that three Wuhan lab workers were hospitalized in November 2019 before public confirmation of the outbreak.

Biden said in a written statement in August that China should be transparent.

The world deserves answers, and I won’t rest until we get them, said the statement attributed to Biden. Responsible nations do not shirk this kind of responsibility to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all need to better understand how COVID-19 originated in order to prevent further pandemics.

But the White House has declined to describe any measures to put pressure on China on the issue and often emphasizes a desire to avoid military conflict and jointly address issues such as global warming.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in August that Biden opposed former President Donald Trump’s demand that China pay $ 10,000 billion in reparations for enabling COVID- 19 to spread beyond its borders.

Biden has conflicts of interest in China due to the business activities of his son Hunter Biden.

The first son still owns a 10% stake in a Chinese investment company that was formed 12 days after joining his father aboard Air Force Two for a 2013 trip to Beijing, according to recently released trade documents. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company, BHR Partners, is co-owned by Chinese public entities.

A 2017 email retrieved from Hunter Bidens’ laptop described a 10% layaway for the big guy in a possible deal involving a Chinese energy company. Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski has said Joe Biden is the big guy.