A 2015 document written by Chinese scientists and health officials stated that SARS coronaviruses were a "new era of genetic weapons" that could be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed, according to a report by Weekend Australian.
The paper is titled "The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons". It suggested that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons.
Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told news.com.au that this report is significant because it reveals that the Chinese were thinking about the military application of coronavirus strains. He further said that the document is as close to a “smoking gun” as we have got.
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"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," Jennings said. "It begins to firm up the possibility that what we have here is the accidental release of a pathogen for military use," Jennings added.
China’s reluctant attitude in the matter of outside investigations into the origins of COVID19 also provides heavy credibility to the document’s finding. "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."
The Australian, whose Saturday edition is the Weekend Australian, asked Robert Potter, a cybersecurity specialist to analyse the leaked Chinese government documents. He said that the document definitely isn’t fake.
"We reached a high confidence conclusion that it was genuine ... It's not fake but it's up to someone else to interpret how serious it is," Potter said. "It emerged in the last few years ... they (China) will almost certainly try to remove it now it's been covered."
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It isn't unusual to see Chinese research papers discussing areas that they're behind on and need to make progress in, Potter further stated.
"It's a really interesting article to show what their scientific researchers are thinking," he added.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. It first emerged in December 2019 in the Wuhan city of China.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, several of which cause respiratory diseases in humans - ranging from a common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
