Title: A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate 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, including the intentional spread of misinformation to downplay the risks of COVID-19, a refusal to cooperate with international health authorities, internal censorship of doctors and journalists, and a malicious disregard for the health of ethnic minorities.
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
This resolution condemns the Chinese government's response to the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak, including China's censorship of doctors and journalists during the early days of the outbreak and its refusal to accept assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The resolution also calls for (1) China to publicly state that there is no evidence that COVID-19 originated from outside China, and (2) the World Health Organization to retract misleading statements of support for China's response to COVID-19.

[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 553 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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116th CONGRESS
  2d Session
S. RES. 553

Expressing the sense of the Senate 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, including the intentional spread of 
    misinformation to downplay the risks of COVID-19, a refusal to 
cooperate with international health authorities, internal censorship of 
 doctors and journalists, and a malicious disregard for the health of 
                           ethnic minorities.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             March 24, 2020

  Mrs. Blackburn (for herself and Mr. Cotton) submitted the following 
  resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Expressing the sense of the Senate 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, including the intentional spread of 
    misinformation to downplay the risks of COVID-19, a refusal to 
cooperate with international health authorities, internal censorship of 
 doctors and journalists, and a malicious disregard for the health of 
                           ethnic minorities.

Whereas records of the Government of the People's Republic of China suggest that 
        the first human became infected with COVID-19 on November 17, 2019, in 
        the Hubei Province of China;
Whereas, on December 27, 2019, Zhang Jixian, a doctor from the Hubei Provincial 
        Hospital of Chinese and Western Medicine, alerted health authorities in 
        China that several 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 contributed to the spread of COVID-19 throughout the city of 
        Wuhan;
Whereas, after being informed of cases of a dangerous new strain of coronavirus 
        concentrated around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, the 
        Government of the People's Republic of China waited 5 days to shut down 
        the market;
Whereas Zhou Xianwang, the mayor of Wuhan, stated that 5,000,000 of the 
        14,000,000 residents of Wuhan left Wuhan before the Government of the 
        People's Republic of China imposed a lockdown;
Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Ai Fen, the director of the emergency department 
        of Wuhan Central Hospital, shared a diagnostic 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 unknown SARS-like virus through WeChat;
Whereas, on December 31, 2019, Wuhan Central Hospital authorities formally 
        reprimanded Ai Fen for ``spreading rumors'' about the virus;
Whereas, on January 1, 2020, an official at the Hubei Provincial Health 
        Commission ordered at least 1 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, the Public Security Bureau of Wuhan detained, 
        questioned, and forced Dr. Li Wenliang and 7 other doctors to sign a 
        letter confessing that Wenliang had made ``false comments'' that 
        ``severely disturbed the social order'';
Whereas, on January 3, 2020, the leading public health authority in China, the 
        National Health Commission, directed all research institutions in China 
        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 and Prevention first asked permission to 
        study COVID-19 in China on January 6, 2020, but was barred by the 
        Government of the People's Republic of China from entering the country 
        until mid-February;
Whereas authorities of the Government of the People's Republic of China first 
        publicly confirmed the existence of COVID-19 on January 9, 2020, 14 days 
        after the presence of a novel strain of coronavirus was internally 
        confirmed;
Whereas the National Health Commission of China publicly denied that COVID-19 
        was transmissible through person-to-person contact until January 15, 
        2020, despite having uncovered contrary evidence in late December and 
        having been alerted of the transmissibility of COVID-19 on January 1, 
        2020;
Whereas, on January 18, 2020, more than 10,000 families attended the annual 
        Lunar New Year Banquet of Wuhan, 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, 1 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 the persecuted 
        Uyghur Muslim minority of China as a result of actions taken by the 
        Government of the People's Republic of China;
Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China detained more than 
        1,000,000 Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in ``re-education 
        camps'', where crowded and unsanitary conditions make the camps hotspots 
        for viral disease and leave prisoners at an elevated risk of contracting 
        COVID-19;
Whereas, as reported by the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and corroborated by 
        video evidence and Radio Free Asia, an unannounced and strictly enforced 
        quarantine of millions of residents of the predominantly Uyghur Muslim 
        Xinjiang Province of China around January 24, 2020, resulted in mass 
        starvation and shortages of basic medical supplies;
Whereas, on February 25, 2020, Xinhua News Service reported that the Government 
        of the People's Republic of China had ``re-located'' 30,000 Uyghur 
        laborers to temporarily shuttered factories in the Hotan prefecture, 
        exposing them to health risks that the Government of the People's 
        Republic of China determined were unacceptable for the ethnically Han 
        majority;
Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the premier infectious 
        disease research institution in the world, was well situated at the 
        beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak to both assist the response of the 
        people and Government of the People's Republic of China and prepare the 
        people and Government of the United States to handle the virus in the 
        case of international spread;
Whereas the National Health Commission of China failed to include individuals 
        who tested positive for COVID-19 but remained asymptomatic in its daily 
        tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases, hampering the ability of public 
        health authorities in the United States to accurately account for the 
        rate of spread and the health risks of the virus;
Whereas a Foreign Ministry Spokesman of the Government of the People's Republic 
        of China, Zhao Lijian, claimed that COVID-19 originated in the United 
        States and that the United States Army brought COVID-19 to Wuhan to wage 
        biological warfare on China;
Whereas other officials of the Government of the People's Republic of China, 
        including scientists working on the COVID-19 response of China, the 
        Ambassador to South Africa of China, and the Ambassador to Australia of 
        China, 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 
        Government of the People's Republic of China, published an article 
        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, the Government of the People's Republic of China 
        expelled nationals of the United States working at the Wall Street 
        Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, reducing the 
        spread of reliable information on the COVID-19 outbreak in China; and
Whereas a study by the University of Southampton found that if the Government of 
        the People's Republic of China had taken action 3 weeks earlier, the 
        spread of COVID-19 would be reduced by 95 percent globally: Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the Senate--
            (1) calls on the Government of the People's Republic of 
        China to--
                    (A) publicly state that there is 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 the expulsion of journalists of the 
                United States;
                    (D) end the detainment of Uyghur Muslims and other 
                persecuted ethnic minorities; and
                    (E) end all forced labor programs;
            (2) condemns--
                    (A) the censorship of the Government of the 
                People's Republic of China of doctors and journalists 
                during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, 
                particularly the treatment of the deceased Dr. Li 
                Wenliang;
                    (B) the refusal of the Government of the People's 
                Republic of China to allow scientists from the Centers 
                for Disease Control and Prevention to assist its 
                response to COVID-19 for more than a month after 
                cooperation was offered, needlessly endangering the 
                lives of its own citizens and hampering the early 
                attempts of the United States to learn more about 
                COVID-19; and
                    (C) the duplicitous denial of the National Health 
                Commission of China of the person-to-person 
                transmissibility of COVID-19; and
            (3) calls for the Director-General of the World Health 
        Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to retract highly 
        misleading statements of support for the response of the 
        Government of the People's Republic of China to COVID-19, 
        especially his praise for the ``commitment from top leadership 
        [of the Government of the People's Republic of China], and the 
        transparency they have demonstrated''.
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