[photochemsyn]

To be clear, the Wuhan Institute of Virology's research program involving betacoronaviruses and CRISPR gene editing technology was funded in part by the US government via a grant to Ecohealth Alliance from the NIH (at least $600,000 which is fairly significant) and the lead researcher at Wuhan developed that approach in collaboration with US scientists, so it's hardly just 'China's fault'.

If a complete ban on this kind of research (CRISPR-editing wild-type viral sequences to make them more infectious in human cell lines, or in mice expressing human genes, etc.) had been implemented and enforced by NIH and NIAID, this scenario might have been avoided. Any (financial? criminal?) reckoning over who is at fault would result in at least some significant degree of shared liability between the USA and China.