WASHINGTON — White House spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday declined to say if President Biden plans to raise China’s fentanyl exports or the origins of COVID-19 during a planned Thursday call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Fentanyl smuggled largely from China is driving a spike in US drug overdose deaths, with 107,000 Americans losing their lives in 2021. COVID-19, meanwhile, has resulted in 1 million American deaths and the US intelligence community says it may have come from a Chinese lab.
“On China, you just mentioned that President Biden intends to bring up South China Sea issues. I was wondering if we could also expect him to be bringing up issues regarding fentanyl exports from China and regarding the origins of COVID-19,” The Post asked Kirby at the White House press briefing.
“I think, as I said, there’s going to be a range of issues,” said Kirby, ducking the question. “We’ll give you a full read out after that call’s over with.”
“Are those two major ones that you would expect?” The Post pressed.
“They are big issues, no argument. I think we’ll give you a readout when the call is over,” Kirby said. “I don’t want to go into any more detail of the call than I just did.”
White House officials refused to confirm whether President Biden will press China’s Xi Jinping on COVID’s origin. APMoments earlier, Kirby volunteered that Biden would likely raise the South China Sea during his talk with Xi. The sea has islets that are disputed among several countries in the region, including the Philippines and Vietnam.
“I would fully expect that, as part of the president’s conversation, that tensions in the South China Sea will come up, as they have routinely with respect to China’s excessive maritime claims that aren’t backed up by international law,” Kirby said.
Biden most recently spoke with Xi in March by phone and in November, the men had a three and 1/2 hour virtual summit. For months after the November summit, White House officials led reporters to believe that Biden failed to mention COVID-19 origins to Xi.
In response to a question from The Post, Biden claimed in January that he did press Xi to be transparent on the origins of the pandemic, even though then-press secretary Jen Psaki had given reporters the opposite impression. Biden said that his own press team was unaware of him doing so because they weren’t in the room for the exchange.
Biden rarely publicly mentions the origins of the virus, though he said in a written August 2021 statement that “the world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them,” noting that “we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics.”
China’s government has refused to cooperate with an international investigation of the origins of the pandemic by the World Health Organization.
The Biden administration is considering undoing some of former President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods “separately” from US pressure for coronavirus transparency, Psaki said in May.
Biden will speak to Xi over the phone Thursday. Getty ImagesBiden also rarely mentioned the fact that much of the illegal fentanyl on the US market comes from China.
In a November statement mourning a surge in drug overdose deaths, for example, Biden didn’t mention the fact that Chinese firms are responsible for a large share of deaths from the potent synthetic opioid, which is increasingly pressed into counterfeit prescription pills and mixed into non-opioid drugs such as cocaine, killing unwitting users.
Biden will speak with Xi amid uncertainty over whether first son Hunter Biden still holds a 10% stake in a Chinese investment firm that’s controlled by state-owned entities. The company, BHR Partners, was formed 12 days after Hunter Biden joined his father, then-vice president Joe Biden, aboard Air Force Two for a 2013 trip to Beijing.
Biden said in December 2020 that members of his family would not hold any business role that conflicts with “or appears to be in conflict” with his job as president, but the White House repeatedly said last year that the first son was still working to “unwind” his Chinese holdings.
Over 1 million Americans have been killed by COVID so far. APHunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said less than a week after President Biden’s November summit with Xi that the first son divested a 10% stake in BHR Partners. But Hunter Biden and the White House provided no further details on who may have acquired his stake and for how much money.
Clark told The Times his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles,” referring to a corporate entity that previously held Hunter Biden’s stake. It’s unclear if Hunter Biden was paid by Chinese government-linked entities for his stake or if he simply transferred his ownership to another person, such as a family member.
Online business records suggest Hunter Biden still owns the 10% stake in BHR, despite his attorney’s claims.
In a separate Chinese business venture, Joe Biden allegedly was involved with his son’s dealings with CEFC China Energy, which the Washington Post reported paid Hunter Biden and first brother Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski says that he spoke with Joe Biden in May 2017 about that venture and a May 13, 2017, email says that the “big guy” would get a 10% equity stake in a corporate entity established with CEFC. Bobulinski alleges that the president was the “big guy.”
