China welcomes science-based COVID-19 origins study, rejects vested interest: chief of thinktank

BEIJING, June 1 (Xinhua) -- China has not been obstructing the study on COVID-19 virus origins, but would firmly oppose those with the vested interest in accusing China of being responsible for the pandemic, Victor Zhikai Gao, vice president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based nongovernmental thinktank, has told Al-Jazeera.

"I don't think China is being obstructive. China does not welcome people with the vested interest in accusing China or trying to hold China responsible for this pandemic. That's what China is firmly opposed to," he said while giving a video interview with Al-Jazeera's "Inside Story" on study on the virus's origins on Friday.

"China wants to oppose those people who refuse to put science above everything else and wants to really shirk their own responsibility for their failure of containing the virus in their own country. And also leading to so many deaths of the good-hearted American people. Almost 600,000 of them. That's I think the shame that we witness in the world," Gao noted.

During the interview, Gao urged the United States to "cooperate with the WHO (World Health Organization) as much as China has already done" in finding origins.

The WHO on Friday reiterated its call for a "de-politicized environment" for the study on COVID-19 virus origins, as the whole process of the study is being "poisoned by politics."

Speaking at a WHO press briefing, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, called on "everyone out there to separate, if they can, the politics of this issue (COVID-19 origin study) from the science."