China is mounting an aggressive media campaign to dismiss statements made by US politicians, particularly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, about the coronavirus potentially having originated in a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Hu Xijin, editor of the national newspaper Global Times, says that now more “earlier confirmed cases have been found in the US and Europe, it will be more and more difficult for the Trump administration to accuse China of originating the novel coronavirus”.

His comments came after Michael Melham, a mayor in New Jersey, said he believed he contracted the virus in November - before cases were discovered in Wuhan.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said yesterday that the Chinese people would "never again accept bullying on the epidemic issue.”

Referring to Mr Pompeo's comments, she said: "We don’t know what he was referring to. He says on the one hand he’s not certain it’s from a lab, on the other hand he has evidence it’s from a lab. If he was to do the right thing he could save hundreds of thousands of lives."

The official People’s Daily is sharing this slogan today on a poster of what looks like a silhouette of Mr Pompeo spitting. It says: “Why are those blundering American politicians still living in dreamland?”

BBC