On 27 June 2023, Chinese-born human rights activist and writer, Jennifer Zeng, who is a contributor to Epoch Times, released the text of an interview she had conducted in September 2021. The unnamed subject of her interview, apparently a scientific researcher who'd worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and possibly still does, said that he was a friend of one Shan Chao, who graduated from the WIV with a Ph.D. and subsequently had been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB)'s Galveston National Laboratory before returning to the WIV. Jennifer Zeng's interview largely records what Shan Chao reportedly told her interview subject. If accurate, what that interviewee researcher reportedly told Jennifer Zeng is important and critically revealing about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s joint civilian-military fusion offensive Biological Weapons (BW) program.
It may be asked why Zeng waited nearly two full years after the interview to release its text; we can only surmise that it may have had something to do with protecting those still inside Communist China. It is also both curious and concerning that Zeng names Shan Chao as the source of her interview subject's information when Shan Chao appears to be himself possibly still inside China, possibly working at the WIV, and thus potentially subject to serious consequences for having spoken to Zeng's interview subject. Nevertheless, the content of the interview is worth addressing here because so few others in the U.S. mainstream media, academia, Congress, national security ranks, White House, or public health institutions will even mention the existence of China's BW program.
Zeng's interviewee told her that Shan Chao worked at both the UTMB and WIV. Although he does not name his boss at either place (and Zeng doesn't ask), dates for their respective tenures at UTMB indicate that his boss at the Galveston National Laboratory may have been Shi Pei-Yong. Shi Pei-Yong is reported by Chinese virologist whistleblower Li-Meng Yan to be a top CCP agent who operates under the CCP's United Front Work Department (UFWD) and has collaborated in his career with the WIV. Shi Pei-Yong's bio that is still up at the UTMB website identifies him as the "I. H. Kempner Professor of Human Genetics and Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology" from October 2015-Sep 2020. According to his LinkedIn page, he held several different positions overall at the UTMB from October 2015 until May 2023, when he moved to a new position as Global Head of Viral Vaccines and Site Head of GSK's Global Vaccines R&D Center in Rockville, MD, USA.
Zeng's interviewee told her that Shan Chao was working on coronavirus research in February 2019, although exactly where is not clear; it's possible that he may have traveled in and out of WIV during 2019. The important thing is that Shan Chao said he'd been tasked in early 2019 by his unnamed boss to test four different coronavirus strains to determine which was most transmissible for human beings as well as across other animal species. Such experiments could possibly lay a premise for blaming some future "zoonotic" event to push a "natural origin" narrative again.
Shan Chao told his friend that these four strains had been given to him by "his boss", who'd acquired them from Nanjing City, the capital of Jiangsu Province, located in northeast China. What is critical about this statement is that Nanjing is the location of the PLA's Nanjing Command headquarters. It was PLA military personnel from Nanjing who collected the ZC45 and ZCC21 bat-derived coronavirus strains between July 2015 and February 2017 from horseshoe bat sites in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China. Those two coronavirus strains eventually formed the backbone of the SARS-CoV-2 that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, although it is not known exactly where that bioweaponeering work took place.
Shan Chao told Zeng's interview subject that he was working on testing those four coronavirus strains he'd been given on ferrets, mice, and monkeys. He said the mice were transgenic humanized mice, genetically bred with ACE-2 lung receptors. Shan Chao reportedly told his friend that the coronavirus strains he was testing on these lab animals were "pathogens" that had been "bioengineered", although he said he didn't know where that work had occurred.
Shan Chao then said that in September 2019 the WIV held some kind of coronavirus "exercise" in the city of Wuhan. He claimed that by 18 October 2019, SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in Wuhan when the Wuhan Military Games began. According to Zeng's interviewee, the WIV had misjudged the transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 because the scientists had been focused on infectiousness via the ACE-2 receptors in human lungs and not on contagiousness (i.e., transmissibility). Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the Wuhan Military Games in October 2019, possibly not yet aware that the virus had escaped their control. Nearly 300 members of the U.S. military, Department of Defense, and support personnel attended the Military Games in Wuhan. Reporting from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and other countries indicates that military athletes who participated in those Games returned home with a "mystery illness". Information about whether any U.S. personnel were infected has been carefully obscured in open-source reporting.
Finally, Shan Chao also reportedly said that he believed in February/March 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 had been released deliberately in the Uyghur Province of Xinjian. By April 2020, the first outbreak of COVID-19 was reported in Xinjiang.
In sum, this should be alarming information that relevant Congressional Committees and Subcommittees ought to be looking into. In a 15 July 2023 interview with Jeffrey Prather on the Prather Report, renowned cardiologist, Dr. Peter McCullough referenced Jennifer Zeng's interview and spoke about the U.S. Government's determined efforts to cover up the role of the WIV in the creation of the SARS-CoV-2. Dr. McCullough clearly understands the urgent need for openness and transparency with the American people as well as holding the CCP accountable for the horror it inflicted on America and the world. How about it, Congress and the USG?