[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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