President Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he views China, which has been accused of downplaying the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, as the “greatest threat actor.”

Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee that if confirmed “the intelligence community … will be laser focused on how this happened and when this happened.”

He said his office would analyze China’s role in the worldwide spread of the coronavirus.

“I view China as the greatest threat actor right now. Look at what we’re dealing with coronavirus and 5G,” Ratcliffe said. “We very clearly do not want an authoritarian regime … setting standards in the world marketplace.”

“I won’t say all roads lead to China, but a lot of them do,” he said.

President Trump has blamed the Chinese ruling Communist Party for misleading the world about how severe the coronavirus was and of failing to accurately report the number of cases it had after the initial reports of the outbreak in Wuhan in December.

Ratcliffe, who would coordinate the intelligence gathering efforts of 17 US agencies, was also asked whether he had seen evidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan.

“I have not,” he answered.

He also said he didn’t have any knowledge of it starting out in a Wuhan food market, but noted that he hadn’t received a classified briefing about the pandemic in several weeks.

Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in recent remarks said there was evidence linking the lab to the coronavirus outbreak.

“Yes, I have,” Trump told White House reporters last Thursday.

But pressed on what gave him that confidence, he said: “I can’t tell you that. I am not allowed to tell you that.”

In an interview Sunday, Pompeo said there’s “enormous evidence” pointing to the lab.

We’ve said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now,” he said on ABC News’ “This Week.”

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert on the White House coronavirus task force, threw cold water on that theory.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Fauci told National Geographic in an interview published Monday.

“Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” he said.

With Post wires