BEIJING/WASHINGTON • China on Wednesday criticized the U.S. “politicization” of efforts to trace the origin of the coronavirus, demanding without evidence that American labs be investigated, ahead of the release of a U.S. intelligence report on the virus.

The U.S. report is intended to resolve disputes among intelligence agencies considering different theories about how the coronavirus emerged, including a once-dismissed theory about a Chinese laboratory accident.

“Scapegoating China cannot whitewash the U.S.,” Fu Cong, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ arms control department, told a briefing.

President Joe Biden received a copy and was briefed on the classified report on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

The intelligence community has been “working expeditiously” to prepare an unclassified version for the public, Psaki said without giving a timeline for its release.

U.S. officials say they do not expect the review to lead to firm conclusions after China stymied earlier international efforts to gather key information on the ground.

China has said a laboratory leak was highly unlikely, and it has ridiculed a theory that coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 infections emerged in late 2019, setting off the pandemic.

Beijing has instead suggested that the virus slipped out of a lab at the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick base in Maryland in 2019.

“It is only fair that if the U.S. insists that this is a valid hypothesis, they should do their turn and invite the investigation into their labs,” Fu said.

Fu said China was not engaged in a disinformation campaign.

The fringe idea once put forward by individual Chinese officials — which lacks public evidence — has become a Chinese government talking point as it attempts to deflect criticism about its possible role in the origins of the virus.

FILE – In this file photo dated Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021, a convoy of vehicles carrying the World Health Organization team enters the interior of the Huanan Seafood Market on the third day of field visit in Wuhan in central China. In a commentary published Wednesday Aug. 25, 2021, the international scientists dispatched to China by the World Health Organization to look for the origins of the coronavirus say the search has “stalled” and warn the window is closing to conduct critical studies that could provide clues on how the virus first infected people.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, FILE)

Ng Han Guan