
[size=1.06667]Chinese Foreign Ministry new spokesman Zhao Lijian gestures as he speaks during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in Beijing, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. China's foreign ministry on Monday said it didn't matter that three expelled journalists had nothing to do with a Wall Street Journal editorial that Beijing deemed racist, and called on the paper to apologize. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
(CNN)US Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell summoned China's ambassador in Washington to the State Department Friday morning, hours after a prominent Chinese official suggested that the US military may have been responsible for bringing the coronavirus to Wuhan, the epicenter of the global pandemic.
[size=1.2]That claim was publicly promoted by China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Thursday, who pointed to remarks made by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention l director Robert Redfield as proof of a growing conspiracy theory that the coronavirus did not originate in central China, as previously thought, and may have been brought there by the US Army.CNN's Ben Westcott in Hong Kong and Steven Jiang in Beijing contributed to this report.