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A week of EU setbacks cloud China’s diplomatic ambitions
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INKED OUT
The party-state likes to control all discussion of China anywhere in the world. One example is how it pushed academic publishers to dismiss the “lab-leak” possibility as a racist conspiracy theory.
Now Peter Daszak, a zoologist with close ties to China, has been dumped (sorry, “recused”) from the Lancet’s UN-backed investigation into the origins of the pandemic. Separately, the medical journal published a grudging clarification of Daszak’s earlier declaration that he had no conflict of interest when he wrote an open letter praising China’s response and decrying its critics.
Oddly, the Lancet doesn’t link the two developments. But others will.