I am pleased to share with you this link to the just-released report of our Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19. I had the honor of serving on this commission alongside former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former CDC Director Robert Redfield, former Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D), former US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, former Deputy US National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, and others. Here is a link to the C-SPAN video of our launch event at the Heritage Foundation this morning. A text of my introductory remarks from that event below.
Here is a link to a Newsweek editorial written by John Ratcliffe and me in conjunction with the release of our report.
Remarks by Jamie Metzl, Commissioner of the Heritage Foundation Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19
July 8, 2024
Thank you, Derrick, Congressman Wenstrup, Chairman Ratcliffe, and everyone.
I’ve worked tirelessly on the COVID-19 origins issue for 4.5 years and am deeply honored to have been the lead witness in Congressman Wenstrup’s critically important hearings and to serve as a commissioner on this absolutely essential nonpartisan commission.
We are here because every person on earth has an absolute right to demand answers about why so many of our friends and relatives are dead and why our lives have been so massively disrupted by a totally avoidable, political pandemic.
Congressman’s Wenstrup’s hearings have rightly asked tough questions of many US officials and actors. Our commission’s report focuses on the entity we believe bears primary responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.
While other governments, including the United States and France, may have played relatively small contributing roles, there can be, in our view, little doubt that China’s government is primarily responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the unique pathologies of the Chinese state, there very likely would have been no pandemic at all.
I am a Democrat and a liberal. I don’t agree with many of the positions of the Heritage Foundation, but that is beside the point for our purposes today.
We come together as Democrats, Republicans, Americans, and human beings to demand accountability for this totally avoidable crisis.
The bipartisan members of our commission may not agree on everything, but we certainly stand united on this.
Although we believe the preponderance of the available evidence leans heavily in the direction of a research-related origin in Wuhan, our assertion of Chinese state culpability would remain unchanged even if the first shreds of evidence should miraculously appear supporting the Huanan market origin hypothesis.
With 28 million people dead as a result of COVID-19 and tens of trillions of dollars in damages, it is simply unacceptable and, frankly, unimaginable that every stone should not be overturned examining what went wrong as an essential foundation of efforts to build a safer future.
In an ideal world, China’s leaders would have taken the lead in these efforts for the good of China’s own people and the global community. Tragically, China’s government has done the exact opposite. It has destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned Chinese citizen journalists, gagged Chinese scientists, blocked any meaningful international investigations, and cynically sandbagged the World Health Organization. Because the Chinese government has so completely abrogated its responsibilities and because foreign governments have been unable or unwilling to hold China to account, the responsibility has fallen to private citizens like us to demand tougher action.
Our Commission makes the following assertions:
- China is primarily responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to over 28 million excess death globally including over 1 million in the United States alone;
- Based on our calculations, the pandemic resulted in $18 trillion dollars in losses to the United States;
- As a means of establishing accountability and discouraging similar behavior in the future, the Chinese government and select Chinese companies must be held liable for these losses;
- Although America’s Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was correctly designed to protect foreign states from liability in US courts, these protections do not and should not always apply in extraordinary circumstances — as was the case when Congress passed an amendment to FSIA in 2016 giving US courts jurisdiction over terrorist financing cases;
- Given the magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis and China’s complete disregard of international norms, human lives, transparency, and accountability, we believe that a similar and highly tailored amendment is now required. For this reason, we have proposed a single paragraph amendment to the FSIA granting U.S. federal courts jurisdiction over cases where injured American citizens are seeking monetary damages against a foreign state, where the foreign state has directly through malfeasance or indirectly through negligence sparked a global pandemic leading to more than a million excess deaths in the United States, and when it has failed to carry out or allow a comprehensive and unfettered investigation.
This may sound like legalese, but passing this amendment would be the first serious step – and by far the most significant step – taken by any entity anywhere toward holding China accountable for COVID-19.
Although we recognize that many commissions issue reports that go nowhere, we have already begun consultations with members of Congress regarding implementing legislation for the recommendations outlined in our report and have reason to expect significant progress over the coming months.
The steps we are recommending may seem aggressive, including in the context of worsening relations between the United States and China, but we have already lived through the consequences of the status quo. Twenty-eight million people are dead as a result of a totally avoidable pandemic. Enough is enough. If we do not take tough action now, future pandemics will almost certainly be far worse.
Four and a half years of Chinese impunity and international impotence now come to an end.
Thank you.