China rails at Biden intelligence probe into virus origins

China hit out at the "dark history" of the U.S. intelligence community on May 27, after President Joe Biden ordered a probe into the COVID-19 origins which threatens to set the course for relations between world's top economies.

Washington is reviewing its diplomatic position with China on issues spanning trade, technological supremacy and rights, while it steps up efforts to hook Western democracies into a united diplomatic front against perceived Chinese aggression.

The countries' trade envoys have held "candid" phone talks on the progress of a deal plotted as a pathway out of a trade war sparked by former President Donald Trump, which saw tariffs lumped on tens of billions of dollars of the rivals' goods.

But on May 26, President Biden reopened a barely healed sore between the countries by ordering U.S. intelligence agencies to report to him within 90 days on whether the COVID-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident.

The lab-leak theory, initially trotted out by Trump then dismissed as "highly unlikely" by a delayed World Health Organization mission to China, has resurfaced in recent days, driven by Washington.

China is intensely sensitive to allegations it could have done more to stop the spread of a pandemic that has gone on to kill well over 3.4 million people and has eviscerated economies since emerging in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Beijing rejects the theory the virus may have emerged from a virology lab in Wuhan and has instead accused the U.S. of peddling "conspiracies" and politicizing the pandemic.

The Biden administration's "motive and purposes are clear", Zhao Lijian a ministry of foreign affairs spokesman said on May 27, rejecting the...