China has urged collaboration with Southeast Asian countries to improve biosecurity and the governance of bioweapons.
Beijing made the call during the first regional workshop with 11 Southeast Asian countries last week in the science and technology hub of Shenzhen.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that the 12 nations agreed to improve communication in biosecurity governance and enhance the implementation of the United Nations-backed Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
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The convention, which China, Russia and the United States are signatories to, is a global safeguard aimed at prohibiting the development and use of such weapons.
“We will strengthen exchanges and mutual understanding, and promote the modernisation of the biosecurity governance system and governance capacity ... and build political consensus, jointly resolve biosecurity risks and promote biotechnology for the benefit of mankind,” Lin said.
“We should also strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention and support international and regional organisations to provide more public products, and explore follow-up actions and deepen coordination ... through regular workshops.”
In addition to the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), and China and East Timor, representatives from global organisations were also at the seminar, including the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.
“China and neighbouring countries share the same destiny with regard to biosecurity issues, including infectious diseases, animal and plant epidemics. Under such circumstances, we need to strengthen cooperation with our neighbours,” Li Fujian, deputy director of the Global Biosafety Governance Research Centre at China Foreign Affairs University, told state broadcaster CCTV.
Sun Xiaobo, the head of the arms control department at China’s foreign ministry, told state news agency Xinhua, that China and Asean nations shared “common positions”.
“The exchanges and cooperation will give new impetus to the building of a China-Asean community of destiny and will make new contributions to the cause of improving global biosafety governance and promoting peace and development,” he said.
Sun said that China is open to contribute more to global bioweapons control efforts, particularly to the BWC, as “the international community has high expectations for strengthening the convention and its implementation mechanisms”.
Beijing and Washington have been at odds over the issues of biosafety and biological weapons, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, when both sides suggested that the origin of the coronavirus could be traced to each other’s research.
In 2021, China and Russia jointly called for the US to abide by the BWC.
Just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Moscow claimed that it had uncovered evidence of a US-funded bioweapons programme in labs there, an accusation that Washington denied. China’s foreign ministry then urged the US “to give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification”.
Last year, China’s Ministry of State Security – the country’s top spy agency – raised alarms about potential biological threats with a post on social media that said “some countries” were “armed” with deadly weapons that could target human genes.
In addition to biosecurity concerns, Asean nations face increasing challenges from tropical infectious diseases, large gaps in public healthcare, and growing threats from poverty and war, according to a 2020 report from the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.
“Highly mobile populations and increased air travel to porous borders and the increased presence of terrorist groups have contributed to increasing the vulnerability of the region to natural, accidental and deliberate biological events,” the report said.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Xi Jinping warns that Chinese laboratories handling deadly pathogens will face closer scrutiny
- China proposes global code of conduct on biosecurity, amid coronavirus ‘lab leak’ row with US
- Legal experts urge people to take new Chinese biosecurity law seriously
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