Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss a newly discovered DARPA grant proposal that sheds light on the origins of COVID-19 and strengthens the lab-leak hypothesis. They then discuss the meeting in Bangkok between Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Finally, they turn to the ongoing battle in the Chinese market between Apple and Huawei.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute's China Center, hosted by Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Episode Transcript
This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from Hudson Institute's China Center.
Shane Leary:
It's Tuesday, January 30th, and we have three topics this week. The first is our reflections on newly released documents obtained by FOIA, which shed light on the origins of COVID-19 and strengthen the lab leak hypothesis. Second, we discussed the meeting between Wang Yi and Jake Sullivan in Bangkok this past weekend and the broader picture of US China diplomatic relations. Finally, we turned to the ongoing battle for the Chinese smartphone market between Apple and Huawei. Miles. How are you?
Miles Yu:
Very good, Shane. Nice to be with you again.
Shane Leary:
Wonderful to be with you. So for our first topic, we have new documents obtained by FOIA, by the organization, US Right to Know, a health advocacy group, and these shed new light on the potential synthetic origins of COVID-19. The documents recovered include drafts and planning materials for the diffuse proposal, a project submitted to DARPA for funding. Diffuse stands for: diffusing the threat of bat borne Coronaviruses. These findings are fairly technical, but they offer insights that accord with a theoretical paper published in 2022, which argued the virus was likely of manmade origin. There's fantastic reporting on this in City Journal, which notes the relevant DARPA proposal was rejected. But some believe that Chinese members of the group that submitted the project may have gone along with the research on their own, and we find the usual suspects involved in this proposal, including Peter Daszak, who authored the proposal, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and found itself under quite a bit of scrutiny throughout the pandemic. So Miles, there's a lot to dig in here. For our listeners that may not remember, you were intimately involved in early investigations of the COVID-19 virus. What were your thoughts upon reading this and how does this accord, I guess, with how you were thinking about this, if you place yourself back in the early days of pandemic and the stuff you were looking at?
Miles Yu:
Well, this search for the origin of COVID virus has been an incredible journey. It is really amazing because not only because the issue is so weighty, it's so important because tens of millions people died because of this virus, this infection. And so obviously the entire humankind had the intense interest in finding out what caused it, the origin of it. So not only trying to find out the capability, but also most important to prevent future pandemics like this from happening again. But China obviously didn't want to cooperate with this international inquiry. As a matter of fact, they were just so dogmatic, so intransigent, and that itself shows it's highly probable they're guilty of creating this virus. But of course, as a scientific matter, you need to have this tangible evidence. So that's why from the very beginning when this pandemic broke out in early January 2020, the United States Government showed incredible interest in finding this out.
And I was in the office of the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo at the time. So I was put in charge of serving in open sources, finding all the clues, and of course I wrote a report for the secretary. And that report was long and provided mountains of circumstantial evidence that pointed to the lab leak, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And that one I think that one has been declassified. You can find out if you want now.
Now this new batch of Freedom of Information Act release further proves the hypothesis at the time. Well, the problem is this search for the origin of Covid has been highly politicized. It is amazing because it was done during the Trump administration, therefore it was labeled by the majority of the scientists in this field biology and the virology as a racist. It's absolutely amazing to see how the science community has betrayed their integrity.
You know this new article, which is mentioned about that published this week by Nicholas Wade, formerly of New York Times, and the title of this article is called “The Story of the Decade.” But I must say the scientist politicization of this issue is not just the story of the decade, its actually the shame of the century to the science field. The reason why the world, particularly from the left, are showing intense interest in this lab leak theory, again, is because Donald Trump is out of office, pure and simple. So that's a very, very tragic political connection to this story. Now you mentioned that the article we are talking about right now confirms an earlier publication in 2022 by three scientists. In that article. In that 2022 article, the three scientists hypothesized that in theory this virus could be synthesized from the lab.
This is very much like a Nicholas Copernicus finally propose something. “Hey listen, conceptually the universe would make much more sense if I place the sun at the center of the universe rather than the earth at the center of the universe. So he has a theory, but this Nicholas Wade article about the new release from DARPA, the Diffuse program, actually provides tangible evidence to support the 2022 theoretical analysis of the lab leak theory. So this new batch discovered by the Freedom of Information release is more like Galileo or Newton, I mean, to provide the tangible scientific observations or evidence to support earlier theory. So that's why this is a very important, very important development.
Shane Leary:
And I mean there's so much to go in here, but I guess I just want to dig deeper into this question that you sort of raised. What is at stake in finding out the origins of this virus and the various interests and causes of the research that may have led to it? I mean, if we had, we’re four years away from the pandemic, if we had a smoking gun and we had broad consensus in the US and we really sort of accepted the fact that this was not of natural origin, what would be at stake in that? And I mean, what implications do you think that would have on US-China relations? What would be the actions going forward that you would see the US policymakers should take?
Miles Yu:
The most dangerous and pernicious aspect of the US-China relationship is that China is a government that has not been held responsible for some of the things that it does on the routine basis. Their research into deadly viruses is done separately without international supervision. And basically those research of deadly viruses has been weaponized. There is a strong evidence that Chinese military has been involved in weaponizing those virus studies. So they want to make biological weapons. Those are extremely a harmful practice, not only affecting people in China, but also entire mankind. This 2020 covid pandemic has shown tens of millions of people are killed. So it is very important, not only for the United States, for the entire world to hold China responsible, accountable for its conduct. And this is basically why it is important. Everybody should have a stake.
Now the reason why this article is very important is that Nicholas Wade, the article in City Journal, he cited a prominent biologist, molecular biologist from Rutgers University, Richard Ebright, saying that the 2022 theoretic article may be noteworthy but not decisive. But now Dr. Ebright said this new documents newly released recently “elevates the evidence provided by the genome sequence from the level of noteworthy to the level of a smoking gun.” That's why it's important. This is significant because not because of what is said in this research 2022 and 2024, right now. It's because who said it. Nicholas Wade. Nicholas Wade is from New York Times, he's one of them, therefore he has more credibility and he's a science writer. He's not just some journalist who pick up the pen and citing unknown sources and produced an article. This is a science serious pursuit. Nicholas Wade was the first serious writer from the left who make the theory of lab leak a legitimate discourse in American public forum. He first published an article in May of 2021 right after the change of the administrations in the left wing publication, the Bulletin of a Nuclear Scientist, entertaining the idea of a lab leak theory and saying this actually worthwhile discussing. So that's why this is, it's very important. Hopefully we have a much more scientific approach to the origin of covid and because as I said, the stake is very, very high.
Shane Leary:
And on that note, I mean the stakes being so high, I just want to drive home: Some people might think of COVID-19 as a one-off event. And I think that that's especially maybe an enticing way to think about this. If you think about it as a zoological event, if you think about it as a natural event. And then the blame is placed more so on pandemic response. And there's still a lot of issues there in terms of the CCP’s response. But if it was of unnatural, synthetic origins, then there's a broader discussion to be had about the relationship between the American scientific community and the Chinese scientific community. The sort of research as you've noted, this sort of virological obsession that the CCP has. So I mean, I know you've talked about this before and you debated not too long ago, past year, on the relationship between American and Chinese academia at the Steamboat Institute. So you've thought a lot about this. Could you kind of lay a background, I mean of the sort of conditions that allowed for something like this to happen in terms of Chinese research and the sort of enticing lax regulatory environment of China for American researchers and that sort of collaboration?
Miles Yu:
Now, every sovereign nation has a right to do research, yet modern science has crossed the national borders because it's international, it's a universal pursuit in a way. So in other words, there must be universal standard of safety, of a moral concern consideration. The Chinese way of doing science is out of control, without the international supervision. I'll tell you why. So far the entire world has knowledge or has possession of about 4,000 daily viruses known to mankind. Half of them, about 2000 of those deadly viruses are in China. And almost all of the 2000 deadly viruses in China are discovered or synthesized in the last 15 years. Think about this. That's incredible. So China has obsession with deadly viruses. With this many deadly viruses stored in some of the Chinese labs and institutions, and biosafety is a serious concern in China. Biosafety is in abysmal state in China, it's very dangerous.
We're not just saying this, the Chinese scientists themselves warn to death about the danger of storing so many deadly viruses inside China because China is obsessed with the study of virology and finding vaccines and also to weaponize them for geopolitical reason. And that's why it is very important. China's biosafety measure should be enhanced to the level of international standards. China has been steadfastly shutting it off from international involvement in its biosafety practice. And that's issue number one. You mentioned about the moral and the ethical concern of this and Chinese challenge. We talk about China threat, China challenge to the world. It's not just about China, how many missiles China has, how many warships China has. It's also about how lacking the morality of this country China presents to the world. The reason's very simple. In the West there are strenuous very serious regulations and the rules about conducting dangerous, immoral and unethical research in pharmaceutical industry, in biology industry area. If you are a biologist in the west, if you want to study say primates, you have to go through all kinds of regulations, FDA supervision, and federal and state, local permits.
You wouldn't have any of that if you have a Chinese partner. You can go to China to study all kinds of unethical immoral practices and that's okay. And of course for those guys who want to get a tenure, get promoted in the west, you need clinical evidence, you need clinical experience and they produce the data and they come back to there. So China for decades has been doing this kind of a very, very big experiment with the Western partners. That's a very morally challenging pursuit. So that's why we have so much discussion in recent years after Covid outbreak, about the ethical dimension of American cooperation with China, with Anthony Fauci with American institutions. Now Wuhan Institute of Virology, the probable source of the virus leaks, had for years scientific cooperation with at least six American university labs and the institutions, that would include the Harvard, University of Alabama, university of North Carolina, university of Texas. So there is very little regulation from the ethical dimension of that. So that's why it is very important we have to face this challenge both physical, material, military, economic challenge from China, but also moral challenge from the Chinese people's Republic of China.
Shane Leary:
And now I want to switch gears to our next topic, but before I do, I just want to say to the listener, if you're interested more in this topic, it's been a while since the pandemic, but we've spoken quite a bit about this on China Insider before, so it might be a good opportunity to go back through the library and see some of Miles' thoughts and how those have developed. But for our next topic this weekend, US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan and China's foreign minister Wang Yi met in Bangkok to build on pledges made to deepen dialogue between the two countries. This is the first high level meeting between US and Chinese officials since Biden and Xi met this past November in San Francisco. But perhaps more importantly, I think it's the first meeting since the Taiwan election, which we've talked quite a bit about the last two episodes, miles, we've seen a lot of these meetings before. They don't necessarily... big developments don't necessarily come out of them, but so what were your expectations for this and could you talk a bit about what is at stake for each party in this meeting?
Miles Yu:
Karl Marx once said, “Philosophers, you have interpreted the world in various ways. The question is how to change it,” right? So we are obsessed with talking with Chinese government officials, talking strategic dialogues and summits and this and that. Talking would do nothing to change China's behavior. Here again, we have all the international crisis going on in the Middle East and Europe, over Taiwan Street and South China Sea, everywhere. The Biden administration, the first instinct there, let's talk with the Chinese more. So that's why Jack Sullivan is in Bangkok talking with his counterpart in Southeast Asia for two days behind the doors. China has the philosophy have this idea that in order to gain concession from the United States, you have to really, really create problems for the United States. They have this very tidy formula, it's called “to use confrontation to extract a concession and cooperation. 以斗争抽合作”
This is very, very traditional. That's why “Jake Sullivan wants to talk about Taiwan Crisis after the election? Yes, you can come, but before you come while we were talking about this issue, we're going to make some statement” and what's a statement? Because while Jake Sullivan is in Thailand, China yesterday sent 30 military aircraft and several warships to Taiwan, around Taiwan area, to show they have the upper hand in the bargaining. This is a very typical Chinese behavior. They have done it again and again. I don't know why we should really keep talking with them. We have take action, right?
Speaking of action, right now, the most sort of eye catching flash in global security is what's going on in the Red Sea, in the Middle East. The Iranian-supported Houthi forces were launching ballistic missiles against commercial shipping. This is insane. Global commerce is in the major crisis mode. China doesn't do anything. China has worships over there and every time international commercial shipping vessels were under attack, so they send out the SOS signals seeking help, every single Chinese worship in the area ignore the international SOS calls and they just, nothing happen. They never take action to help the sailors in distress. And this is outrageous. Our Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Del Toro actually spoke about this with a great amount of anger the other day about this Chinese unprofessional behavior. And China also is supporting the bad guys in the Hamas-Israeli war. We don't have any smoking gun evidence to support China was directly involved, but the fact remain indisputable, that is the Israeli defense forces have found enormous amount of Chinese made weapons in the Hamas headquarters, inner tunnels, and China would have to come out and explain this. So far they've done nothing.
And also the war in Ukraine, China has been warned the consequence will be enormous and prohibitive if you supply Russia with lethal weapons. So China took note of that. So instead of supporting Russia's war in Ukraine through direct export of weapons, China has been supporting Russia's economy and Russia's industry, particularly is the military industry, without limits. China sent tens of thousands of units of trucks, railroad cars, and drones to Russia and China become one of the largest customer of Russia's energy export. And China of course have this pretty much a lot of cash infusion to Russia economy. So that's why they support Russia's war indirectly. The reason is very simple because nothing would please the Chinese Communist Party more than the United States, the only country that could deter Chinese action in Asia Pacific and Taiwan Street in particular being, distracted by some conflict somewhere else because America is a global power.
So you might say the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East are basically pretty good distractions for the United States from the Chinese perspective. And all those issues have to be solved, resolved. The talking is one thing, but instead of talking, in addition to talking, we should do more. That is the real action. So yes, the South China Sea is another flashing point. China and the Philippines almost went to direct confrontation just a few weeks ago. So anything big and unimaginable could happen in that part of the world. Yet we really have not done enough to send a strong signal to China. “You got to stop in the name of peace. “
Shane Leary:
I think that's incredibly well said. For our last topic, we're seeing a battle play out between Huawei and Apple, in the Chinese market. The launch of the iPhone 15 was met with mixed reactions by the Chinese public and in some ways seemed to be overshadowed by the Mate 60 Pro according to social media discussions and polling in China. On the other hand, when we look at the numbers, at least back in October and perhaps today, the leading smartphone in China in terms of sales was still the iPhone 15 in October. In fact, three of the five top selling phones were variations of the iPhone with the Mate 60 pro standing at second place. And this competition between the two manufacturers is laden with patriotic undertones and it seems to be about more than simply features and technical expectations. So Miles, could you help us unpack the significance of these developments not only for China but for Apple, a major US corporation and arguably a source of power and influence for the United States?
Miles Yu:
Again, this is part of the familiar pattern our China's conducting business. We say China in essence is not a market economy, and this is another example. So Huawei is supposed to be a non-state company, but in essence is a Chinese state owned company, or state control company I should say. Because everything Huawei does would help, in accord with the Chinese Communist Party geopolitical strategies. Huawei spearheaded China's effort to dominate global critical telecom networks, 5G, several years ago. That's their way to do it. So there will drive out all the competitors with this competitive advantage in China because they’re subsidized. So Huawei can basically control the global communication networks. That is a pretty serious challenge. Here, Apple. Apple is, I think as of today is still the top US company with the largest capitalization of the value. Yet most of the Apple's flagship products, it's iPhones, were made in China.
So about 80% of the Apple's next generation iPhones were made in one single factory in Zhengzhou, Henan province. So that basically is a very dangerous dependency on China. So now Apple's iPhones were very popular among Chinese customers, and so Chinese government is not very happy about that. So they put in Huawei. While Apple basically starts selling its newest version, the iPhone 15. Huawei also roll out its counterpart that is Huawei Mate 60 pro and with some of the fancy features. It's not a bad phone, but it's not iPhone. Because in addition to the features, there's also a safety issue because Huawei is intricately related to the Chinese state surveillance system and Apple allegedly is not. So, at least by popular assumption, Apple is much safer. So even though Apple's database is stored in Guizhou province in China, so that basically is also debatable, but also Apple obviously has a better encryption, is an American company.
So because this is the state sponsored push against Apple iPhone, so, since they roll out of Apple 15 and Huawei Mate 60 pro, Huawei has outsold the Apple iPhone by a yard. That is changed until this quarter, actually the last quarter of 2023, because finally Apple outsold Huawei's patriotic phone if you will. The reason is very simple because customers in China not only like to have a made in China smartphone, they also want to have a phone that has a secure, more secure than Huawei. So they do not like the Chinese state surveillance system as well. That's one of the most important reasons why Apple sales in China, the iPhone 15 is a sort of an uptick. Of course, China controls the marketing, China controls many of the economic decisions. I don't see however, that Apple’s temporary edge in terms of sales could continue for a long time because Apple could be kicked out Chinese market anytime.
Apple knows this. That's why they began to diversify its own dependency. On China market alone, Apple has shifted a significant portion of its manufacturing capability, demands manufacturing needs to somewhere else, to Vietnam, to India and even to Japan. Apple also is trying to reduce its dependency on Chinese made parts for its iPhones. I think right now it's very low, it's almost nothing. It's like two or 3% of Apple phones assembled in China, have Chinese made parts. That's the report I read. I don't know whether it's true or not, but at least that's a pretty good development from my point of view.
Shane Leary:
And before we wrap up, I just want to ask one more question. Is there sort of a bifurcation in terms of who's using what phone, the elites versus the average Chinese citizen? I remember when the Huawei Mate 60 came out, I believe there was some reporting of many Chinese officials still relying on the iPhone and now I've seen some reporting that there might be government directives to sort of cease this practice. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit.
Miles Yu:
Okay, so the Chinese market obviously is huge and that's become very attractive to a lot of American companies, particularly in this case Apple and Tesla. But because of advanced technology, because there are relatively better security features in Tesla cars, for example, in Apple iPhones. So Chinese government literally ban all the elites from using it. So for example, if you're a government official or not just a central government official, but also provincial local government official, you're not allowed to drive a Tesla because Tesla has linked to the Starlink, it has a safety feature, it's pretty good, right? Apple iPhone has a much better encryption system than Chinese. So that's why the Chinese government have been discouraging people from buying it. But listen, people voted with their feet, right? They move away from Chinese made smartphones and they buy Apple iPhones more and more. But even though Huawei has been sort of in the outer picture, the Huawei Mate 60 pro is not selling very well at all. But China has many other state-controlled companies too. One of the biggest one is Vivo. You go to Sam's Club, you go to Costco, you see a lot of flat screen TVs. They're made by Vivo, VIVO, that's another Chinese company. So Vivo has also has this new smartphone. They have become the biggest challenger, competitor against the Apple iPhone 15 in China. So China has a lot of tricks up in his sleeves.
Shane Leary:
I think that's a great note to end on. Miles, thanks so much again for taking the time and look forward to doing this again next week.
Miles Yu:
Thank you very much and I'll see you next week.
Shane Leary:
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of China Insider. If you enjoy the show, please share with your friends and colleagues and for our Chinese language audience, be sure to come back and check out our monthly Chinese language episodes, which are released on the same channel as well as the Hudson Institute YouTube channel. For more research and analysis from the China Center, be sure to find Miles on X and then head on over to Hudson.org where you can read and watch more on these and other pressing issues around the globe. Finally, please review and subscribe wherever you are listening from to help grow the show from all of us. The China Insider will see you next week.