London/Melbourne, May 10: Chinese scientists allegedly investigated weaponising coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic and may have predicted a World War III fought with biological weapons, according to media reports referring to documents obtained by the US State Department.

According to ‘The Sun' newspaper in the UK, quoting reports first released by ‘The Australian', the “bombshell” documents obtained by the US State Department reportedly show the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) commanders making the sinister prediction. Chinese Scientists Discussed Weaponising SARS Coronaviruses 5 Years Before Pandemic: Report.

US officials allegedly obtained the papers which were written by military scientists and senior Chinese public health officials in 2015 as part of their own investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Chinese scientists described SARS coronaviruses — of which COVID is one example — as presenting a “new era of genetic weapons”.

The PLA papers referenced seem to fantasise that a bioweapon attack could cause the "enemy's medical system to collapse". It references work by US Air Force colonel Michael J. Ainscough, who predicted World War III may be fought with bioweapons.

The paper also includes musing that SARS —which hit China in 2003 — could have been a man-made bioweapon deliberately unleashed by "terrorists".

They reportedly boasted the viruses could be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”.

The document lists some of China's top public health figures among the authors and has been revealed in an upcoming book on the origins of COVID, titled ‘What Really Happened In Wuhan'.

China reported the first COVID-19 case in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and since then the deadly disease has become a pandemic, affecting more than 157,789,300 people and over 3,285,200 deaths worldwide.

Tom Tugendhat MP and Australian politician James Paterson said the document raises major concerns about China's transparency on the origins of COVID-19.

Tugendhat, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, was quoted in ‘The Sun' as saying: "China's evident interest in bioweapons is extremely concerning. Even under the tightest controls these weapons are dangerous.

"This document raises major concerns about the ambitions of some of those who advise the top party leadership.”

Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told news.com.au that the document is as close to a “smoking gun” as we've got.

“I think this is significant because it clearly shows that Chinese scientists were thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed,” said Jennings.

“It begins to firm up the possibility that what we have here is the accidental release of a pathogen for military use,” added Mr Jennings.

He also said that the document may explain why China has been so reluctant for outside investigations into the origins of COVID-19.

“If this was a case of transmission from a wet market it would be in China's interest to co-operate … we've had the opposite of that.”

Questions remain over the origins of the deadly virus after a much derided World Health Organisation (WHO) probe earlier this year, with the organisation ordering a further investigation which factors in the possibly of a lab leak.

Most scientists have said there is no evidence that COVID-19 is manmade — but questions remain whether it may have escaped from a biolab in Wuhan — the Chinese region where the pandemic originated.

China is known to have been carrying out high risk "gain of function" research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — which is near the outbreak's ground zero at the Huanan Seafood Market.

There is no evidence so far to suggest it was intentionally released by China.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, the state-run Global Times newspaper slammed The Australian for publishing the article to smear China.

An academic book that explores bioterrorism and possibilities of viruses being used in warfare was interpreted as a conspiracy theory by The Australian, which deliberately and malignantly intends to invent pretexts to smear China, Chen Hong, a professor and director of the Australian Studies Center at East China Normal University, told the newspaper.

"It is a shame for anti-China forces in Australia to back their own ideology against China at the expense of basic professional journalistic ethics, conspiring to twist the real meaning of the book," Chen said.

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