Title: 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 Chinese 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.
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]
[H. Res. 907 Introduced in House (IH)]

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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 Chinese 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 resolution; 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 include 
   the Chinese 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.

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 Western Medicine alerted China's health 
        authorities 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 the Chinese Government waited five days after being informed of cases of 
        a dangerous new strain of coronavirus concentrated around Wuhan's open-
        air market to shut down of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market 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 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 over WeChat;
Whereas, on December 31, 2019, Wuhan Central Hospital authorities formally 
        reprimanded Fei for ``spreading rumors'' about the virus;
Whereas, on January 1, 2020, an official at the Hubei Provincial 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 Bureau 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 
        social order'';
Whereas, on January 3, 2020, the leading public health authority in China, the 
        National Health Commission, directed 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 permission 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 existence of COVID-19 
        on January 9, 2020, 14 days after the presence of a novel strain of 
        coronavirus was internally confirmed;
Whereas China's National Health Commission publicly denied COVID-19 was person-
        to-person transmissible until January 15, 2020, despite having uncovered 
        contrary evidence in late December and being alerted of the 
        transmissibility 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 Government--

    (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 millions 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 reported that China had 
``re-located'' 30,000 Uyghur laborers to temporarily shuttered factories in 
the Hotan prefecture, exposing them to health risks the Chinese Government 
deemed unacceptable for the ethnically Han majority;

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 internationally;
Whereas China's National Health Commission failed to include individuals who 
        tested positive for COVID-19 but remained asymptomatic in its daily 
        tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases, hampering American public health 
        authorities' 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 scientists 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 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, China expelled American nationals working at the 
        Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and 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 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 journalists;
                    (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 Control to 
                assist its response to COVID-19 for over a month after 
                cooperation was offered, needlessly endangering the 
                lives of its own citizens and hampering the United 
                States early attempts to learn more about COVID-19; and
                    (C) China's National Health Commissions' 
                duplicitous denial of the person-to-person 
                transmissibility of COVID-19; and
            (3) calls for the World Health Organization Director-
        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 [China's] top leadership, and the 
        transparency they have demonstrated''.
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