[T-A]

China is a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention [1]. The US State Department regularly issues a compliance report about it (and other international agreements). Here [2] is how it summarized China's compliance in August 2019:

"Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China (China) engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC. In addition, the United States does not have sufficient information to determine whether China eliminated its assessed biological warfare (BW) program, as required under Article II of the Convention."

(That's followed by some more details, which you can read about in [2].)

Given this ongoing scrutiny, it would be very surprising if a smoking gun that the PRC has in fact been developing bioweapons were just swept under the rug.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention

[2] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Compliance-...

[Consultant32452]

I'm making the assumption that there's a MAD situation here with regards to revealing bioweapon programs. I am assuming every major economy has clandestine bioweapon programs and that every major economy has the dirt on everyone else's bioweapons programs, regardless of treaties. So if the US, or someone else, comes out hard against China for an alleged bioweapon program, then China will release information about US programs. That is why, in my opinion, the media headlines and public positions of the major players will be a polite fiction. The truth may wind up buried in some report somewhere, but it won't make the same kinds of headlines that "kooky bat eating" makes.

[sterlind]

One of the issues in treaty monitoring for bioweapons is that so much research is inherently dual-use. The CDC synthesized Spanish flu and infected primates to study why it was so lethal.. they've even tweaked regular strains of flu to make them more lethal, in order to study what genetic factors influence virulence and mortality. There are legitimate, compelling reasons to make even genetically engineered pathogens. Even straight-up engineered bioweapons can be used to study defenses.

[ngcc_hk]

Just do not leak and not under communist rule.

Even if this is not, you just cannot trust them. They leak sars in their Beijing lab

“ In fact, the SARS virus had ‘escaped’ multiple times from a lab in Beijing, according to the Nature article.”