It began in the 1990s as a trickle of Chinese military scientists trained by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and arriving at U.S. universities and research institutions.

Then, via the scientific exchange equivalent of chain migration, U.S. virus research programs were flooded with scientists from Communist China, where Chinese scientists already working in the U.S. invited close colleagues to their laboratories.

Thus, was created pockets of U.S.- based de facto Chinese research programs linked to the Chinese military, much of which was directly or indirectly funded by the U.S. government.

In essence, China colonized U.S. virus research programs, colonies that were financed by U.S. taxpayers, likely amounting to billions of dollars.

Dr. Shibo Jiang, now Professor and Director, Institute of Medical Microbiology at China’s Fudan University in Shanghai, obtained his MS and MD degrees from the First and the Fourth Medical University of the PLA.

Between 1987 and 1990, he received his postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University in New York.

After 1990, Shibo Jiang worked in or has been associated with the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute of the New York Blood Center.

He developed an extensive network of collaborative research with other U.S. virus research laboratories and received more than $17 million in U.S. research grants, the vast majority coming from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

During this entire period, Shibo Jiang maintained extensive collaborative research with PLA laboratories, described in detail here, while simultaneously inviting into his U.S. laboratory and training scientists linked to the Chinese military.

At the same time, Chinese military programs in virus research were expanding enormously and exploiting the knowledge and skills obtained by Chinese scientists working in U.S. laboratories.

While attending the PLA’s First Military Medical University, Shuwen Liu and Shibo Jiang together published an article on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1986.

After obtaining his position with the Kimball Research Institute in 1990, Shibo Jiang maintained his relationship with the First Military Medical University of the PLA in Guangzhou.

By 2002, Shuwen Liu had joined Shibo Jiang at the Kimball Research Institute, while continuing his affiliation with the First Military Medical University.

Also in 2002, Shibo Jiang was collaborating with the PLA scientists at the Department of Microbiology of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an.

The onset of the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus pandemic in 2002 caused a major shift in the virus research activities of the PLA and the activities of Shibo Jiang and his Chinese colleagues working in U.S. laboratories.

Prior to the outbreak, the PLA largely considered coronavirus a veterinary disease, particularly in working dogs.

Afterward, the PLA would play a major role in human coronavirus research.

That effort was centered around two Chinese military research centers, the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing, and hospitals and research institutes under the Nanjing Military Command, in particular, the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing.

Three key players, who would eventually be involved in the COVID-19 saga, came from elements of the PLA’s Nanjing Military Command.

They were Yusen Zhou, Guangyu Zhao, and Yuzhang Wu.

Yusen Zhou and Guangyu Zhao would become long-time research collaborators of Shibo Jiang, Yusen Zhou would become the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing.

Two scientists from Yusen Zhou’s military institute would work in Shibo Jiang’s U.S. laboratory.

The first was Yuxian He, who initially followed Shibo Jiang to Rockefeller University and then to his laboratory at the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute.

The second was Lanying Du, allegedly Yusen Zhou’s wife, who is still an employee at the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute in New York and recently received a 5-year grant totally $4.1 million awarded by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Yuzhang Wu became Director of the Institute of Immunology at the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing.

Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan claims that the COVID-19 virus originated in laboratories overseen by China’s PLA, using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 collected from Zhoushan, China, then characterized and genetically engineered under the supervision of the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing and the Research Institute for Medicine of the PLA Nanjing Military Command.

After the onset of the 2002 SARS pandemic, Shibo Jiang shifted his research focus from HIV to coronavirus, greatly expanded his work with PLA research institutes, including the Nanjing Military Command, and began building his connections with other U.S. virus laboratories, some of which would play roles in the research leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely:

• Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Research Center of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases;
• Dr. Ralph Baric’s Department of Epidemiology at University of North Carolina, a laboratory known for its “gain of function” research on coronaviruses;
• Virology Division, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD;
• Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, Texas.

In 2015, Shobo Jiang was part of a joint project linking the University of North Carolina, the University of Minnesota, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on the subject of bat-to-human coronavirus transmission.

From 2012 to 2020, Shibo Jiang published 12 scientific articles with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Between 2013 and 2020 he published 11 articles with UTMB, home of the Department of Defense-funded Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, which houses a BL-4 high containment facility for viral research and has long been an infiltration target of the Chinese military.

UTMB now has permanent faculty members, who came from Chinese military medical universities.

Today there is virtually nothing happening in U.S. virus research laboratories about which China’s military is not intimately aware.

What is described in this article is only the tip of the iceberg. To be continued.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired from an international career in business and medical research with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a member of the Citizens Commission on National Security. His email address is lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.