China must cooperate in creating a scientific consensus into the source of the coronavirus pandemic,William Hague has said, adding that the world is “hungry for the truth”.
The former UK foreign minister said Beijing would come under intense global pressure to accept the creation of international pandemic unit, run jointly by China and the US, as well as greater global cooperation on vaccines.
Speaking to a Policy Exchange online event, Lord Hague said an international inquiry would be the best way to reach a scientific consensus, but he predicted China will resist the idea.
He said he also doubted the Chinese embassy claims that the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, had assured China that the UK did not wish to politicise the pandemic, and that Britain had an open mind about the source of the virus.
“The whole world wants the scientific truth about this. However that happens, we want that scientific consensus, including Chinese scientists, about where it arose and how it probably arose in terms of the ‘wet markets’ in Wuhan,” Hague said.
“There are alternative theories, but I have not seen a credible alternative theory that does not have it coming out of China somehow. The world is hungry for the truth – on that we are on all on the same page.”
Hague said China had indulged in clumsy attempts on social media to blame others, but its efforts had been exposed.
He also admitted that the west’s approach to China had for too long been “uncoordinated, incoherent and ineffective”, pointing to the divisions between the EU and US. He said the west had to recognise that it could not be dependent on China in fields such as electric batteries or telecommunications, but at the same time it had to find ways to cooperate on issues such as the climate crisis.
The idea of an international inquiry was most strongly backed by Alexander Downer, a former Australian ambassador to the UK, who suggested the proposal had to be pursued at a G7 level with the support of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
“We know it started in China. We do not know exactly how it started. We need to make demands of China. They might be pretty resistant at first blush, but we have to persevere,” Downer said.
“For China this is potentially quite a blow to its standing in the world. This is a pretty rough thing to say, but we need to ram it home to them that if any country that wants to trade with the international community, there are certain standards that have to be met and their standards here of biosecurity fall well below what the international community expects.
“We need to ram that message home in a brutal sort of diplomatic way. They can resist that, but it will damage their standing with the broader international community not just the west if they continue to try to cover up – assuming they know - how this coronavirus pandemic erupted from Wuhan.”
