IV 
116TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. RES. 907 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China made multiple, serious mistakes in 
the early stages of the COVID–19 outbreak that heightened the severity 
and spread of the ongoing COVID–19 pandemic, which include the Chi-
nese Government’s intentional spread of misinformation to downplay 
the risks of the virus, a refusal to cooperate with international health 
authorities, internal censorship of doctors and journalists, and malicious 
disregard for the health of ethnic minorities. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 24, 2020 
Mr. BANKS (for himself, Mr. MOULTON, Mr. KEVIN HERN of Oklahoma, Mr. 
BUCSHON, Mr. ROGERS of Alabama, Mr. LOUDERMILK, Mr. KELLY of 
Mississippi, Mr. GALLAGHER, Mr. KINZINGER, Mr. SMITH of Missouri, 
Mr. ABRAHAM, Mr. WALTZ, Mr. GONZALEZ of Ohio, Mr. RIGGLEMAN, 
Mr. HAGEDORN, Mr. NORMAN, Mr. CRAWFORD, Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio, 
Ms. STEFANIK, and Mr. WEBER of Texas) submitted the following resolu-
tion; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
RESOLUTION 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that 
the Government of the People’s Republic of China made 
multiple, serious mistakes in the early stages of the 
COVID–19 outbreak that heightened the severity and 
spread of the ongoing COVID–19 pandemic, which in-
clude the Chinese Government’s intentional spread of 
misinformation to downplay the risks of the virus, a 
refusal to cooperate with international health authorities, 
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internal censorship of doctors and journalists, and mali-
cious disregard for the health of ethnic minorities. 
Whereas Chinese Government records suggest that the first 
human became infected with COVID–19 on November 
17, 2019, in China’s Hubei Province; 
Whereas, on December 27, 2019, Zhang Jixian, a doctor 
from the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Chinese and West-
ern Medicine alerted China’s health authorities that sev-
eral individuals exhibiting mysterious, flu-like symptoms, 
were infected with a novel strain of coronavirus; 
Whereas Dr. Yu Wenbin and a team of researchers from 
Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden reported that 
the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market greatly contrib-
uted to the spread of COVID–19 throughout the city of 
Wuhan; 
Whereas the Chinese Government waited five days after being 
informed of cases of a dangerous new strain of 
coronavirus concentrated around Wuhan’s open-air mar-
ket to shut down of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Mar-
ket in Wuhan; 
Whereas Zhou Xianwang, the mayor of Wuhan, stated that 
5,000,000 of Wuhan’s 14,000,000 residents left the city 
before the Chinese Government imposed a lockdown; 
Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Ai Fen, director of Wuhan 
Central Hospital’s emergency department, shared a diag-
nostic report on the then unknown COVID–19 virus with 
a group of doctors through the social media application 
WeChat; 
Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Dr. Li Wenliang, warned 
his medical school classmates of an outbreak of an un-
known SARS-like virus over WeChat; 
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Whereas, on December 31, 2019, Wuhan Central Hospital 
authorities formally reprimanded Fei for ‘‘spreading ru-
mors’’ about the virus; 
Whereas, on January 1, 2020, an official at the Hubei Pro-
vincial Health Commission ordered at least one private 
genomics testing company to cease testing samples of a 
SARS-like virus from Wuhan and to destroy all existing 
samples of the virus; 
Whereas, on January 3, 2020, Wuhan’s Public Security Bu-
reau detained, questioned and forced Dr. Li Wenliang 
and seven other doctors to sign a letter confessing he had 
made ‘‘false comments’’ that ‘‘severely disturbed the so-
cial order’’; 
Whereas, on January 3, 2020, the leading public health au-
thority in China, the National Health Commission, di-
rected all Chinese research institutions to cease publicly 
publishing any information related to a then unknown 
SARS-like virus, and ordered them to destroy existing 
samples of the virus or transfer them to approved testing 
sites; 
Whereas the Centers for Disease Control first asked permis-
sion to study COVID–19 within China on January 6, 
2020, but was barred by the Chinese Government from 
entering the country until mid-February; 
Whereas Chinese authorities first publicly confirmed the ex-
istence of COVID–19 on January 9, 2020, 14 days after 
the presence of a novel strain of coronavirus was inter-
nally confirmed; 
Whereas China’s National Health Commission publicly denied 
COVID–19 was person-to-person transmissible until Jan-
uary 15, 2020, despite having uncovered contrary evi-
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dence in late December and being alerted of the trans-
missibility of COVID–19 on January 1, 2020; 
Whereas, on January 18, 2020, over 10,000 families attended 
the city of Wuhan’s annual Lunar New Year Banquet, 
which was organized and sponsored by the Wuhan city 
government; 
Whereas the People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in China, 
first reported on the coronavirus on January 21, 2020, 
nearly a month after the virus was internally confirmed; 
Whereas, on February 7, 2020, one month after checking 
into Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr. Li Wenliang died of a 
severe case of COVID–19; 
Whereas the COVID–19 outbreak has disproportionately 
harmed China’s persecuted Uyghur Muslim minority as a 
result of the following actions taken by the Chinese Gov-
ernment— 
(1) the detention of over 1,000,000 Uyghur Muslims 
and other ethnic minorities in ‘‘re-education camps’’, 
whose crowded and unsanitary conditions makes the 
camps hotspots for viral disease and leave prisoners at an 
elevated risk of contracting COVID–19; 
(2) as reported by Uyghur Human Rights Project, 
and corroborated by video evidence and Radio Free Asia, 
an unannounced and strictly enforced quarantine of mil-
lions of residents in its predominantly Uyghur Muslim 
Xinjiang Province around January 24, 2020, resulted in 
mass starvation and shortages of basic medical supplies; 
and 
(3) on February 25, 2020, Xinhua News Service re-
ported that China had ‘‘re-located’’ 30,000 Uyghur labor-
ers to temporarily shuttered factories in the Hotan pre-
fecture, exposing them to health risks the Chinese Gov-
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ernment deemed unacceptable for the ethnically Han ma-
jority; 
Whereas the Centers for Disease Control, being the premier 
infectious disease research institution in the world, was 
well situated at the beginning of the COVID–19 outbreak 
to both assist China’s response and prepare the United 
States to handle the virus should it spread internation-
ally; 
Whereas China’s National Health Commission failed to in-
clude individuals who tested positive for COVID–19 but 
remained asymptomatic in its daily tally of confirmed 
COVID–19 cases, hampering American public health au-
thorities’ ability to accurately account for the health risks 
of infection and spread rate of the virus; 
Whereas Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Zhao Lijian, 
claimed that COVID–19 originated in the United States 
and that the United States Army brought the virus to 
Wuhan to wage biological warfare on China; 
Whereas other Chinese Government officials including sci-
entists working on China’s COVID–19 response, China’s 
Ambassador to South Africa and China’s Ambassador to 
Australia have claimed that there is no evidence that 
COVID–19 originated in China; 
Whereas, on March 4, 2020, Xinhua News Agency, an official 
mouthpiece of the Chinese Government, published an ar-
ticle threatening to cut off medical supply exports to the 
United States and ‘‘plunge [the United States] into the 
mighty sea of coronavirus’’; 
Whereas, on March 17, 2020, China expelled American na-
tionals working at the Wall Street Journal, Washington 
Post, and New York Times, reducing the spread of reli-
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able information on the COVID–19 outbreak in China; 
and 
Whereas a study by the University of Southampton found 
that if China had taken action 3 weeks earlier, the spread 
of coronavirus would be reduced by 95 percent globally: 
Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) calls on the Chinese Government to— 
(A) publicly state that there’s no evidence 
that COVID–19 originated anywhere else but 
China; 
(B) denounce the baseless conspiracy that 
the United States Army placed COVID–19 in 
Wuhan; 
(C) revoke its expulsion of American jour-
nalists; 
(D) end its detainment of Uyghur Muslims 
and other persecuted ethnic minorities; and 
(E) end all forced labor programs; 
(2) condemns— 
(A) the Chinese Government’s censorship 
of doctors and journalists during the early days 
of the outbreak and particularly its treatment 
of the deceased Dr. Li Wenliang; 
(B) the Chinese Government’s refusal to 
allow scientists from the Centers for Disease 
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Control to assist its response to COVID–19 for 
over a month after cooperation was offered, 
needlessly endangering the lives of its own citi-
zens and hampering the United States early at-
tempts to learn more about COVID–19; and 
(C) China’s National Health Commissions’ 
duplicitous denial of the person-to-person trans-
missibility of COVID–19; and 
(3) calls for the World Health Organization Di-
rector-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to 
retract highly misleading statements of support for 
the Chinese Government’s response to COVID–19, 
especially his praise for the ‘‘commitment from [Chi-
na’s] top leadership, and the transparency they have 
demonstrated’’. 
Æ 
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