In a rare turn of events, the scientist who first released the COVID-19 virus sequence was temporarily “evicted from the laboratory” and found sleeping on the street, sparking a storm of public opinion both in Chinese and English media and on social platforms.
The focus figure, Zhang Yongzhen, and his research team have since returned to the laboratory, with posts on his Weibo account stating that the post about being kicked out of the lab has been deleted. However, the technological dispute surrounding Zhang Yongzhen is far from over, and when he will be able to escape this ordeal remains uncertain.
Four years ago, an outbreak of a new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) occurred in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, leading to countless infections and deaths, with the epidemic spreading globally under the concealment by the CCP.
In January 2020, Zhang Yongzhen was the first to publicly release the gene sequence of the novel coronavirus, contributing to the early development of testing reagents and vaccines worldwide. As a result, Zhang Yongzhen was selected as one of the top ten figures of 2020 by Nature magazine.
Internationally, Zhang Yongzhen is one of China’s top virologists. Prior to discovering the gene sequence of the novel coronavirus, he had already gained international recognition for some of his discoveries in virology. However, in China, there was not much media coverage of him, and most Chinese people did not know who Zhang Yongzhen was.
This time, industry professionals and media figures paying attention to Zhang Yongzhen’s situation have stirred up discussions about him being “evicted from the lab,” which has made headlines and gained support and sympathy for him. This may be something the CCP does not want to see.
On April 29, 2024, the 60-year-old Zhang Yongzhen posted on Weibo that the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center informed his research team in just one minute to vacate their P3 laboratory within two days for renovation. The laboratory was then closed on April 28th, and Zhang and his team were barred from entering.
Starting from the evening of April 28th, Zhang Yongzhen lay outside the laboratory with a sign saying “East China Institute of Pathogenic Biology.” The laboratory entrance was guarded by multiple security personnel. When it rained at night, the Public Health Center did not allow Zhang and his students to take shelter in the laboratory.
A photo of Zhang Yongzhen covered in a blanket leaning against the laboratory door with the “East China Institute of Pathogenic Biology” sign went viral on social media, sparking widespread outrage. Many people found it incomprehensible that a scientist would protest in such a manner.
In reality, Zhang Yongzhen was not engaging in performance art for protest. He was concerned that outsiders entering the laboratory could disturb the experimental equipment.
The Director of the Public Health Clinical Center, Fan Xiaohong, arranged for an unqualified construction team to renovate, potentially entering the laboratory at any time.
Zhang’s P3 laboratory is the highest level of safety protection in Shanghai. It was in this laboratory that Zhang Yongzhen’s team first sequenced the RNA of the novel coronavirus in January 2020, making it the first lab globally to do so. Additionally, if a hospital in China discovers a new unknown pathogen, they might still think of sending samples to Zhang Yongzhen’s lab first. His achievements in virus discovery in this lab are well-known in the international academic community and cannot be compared to other Chinese experts.
Relocating an operational P3 biosafety laboratory is an extremely complex and dangerous task that cannot be done by a construction team.
A researcher expressed that just one hour without power for the refrigerators at -70 to -80 degrees Celsius could destroy three years of hard work for five Ph.D. students. Precise instruments worth millions, if bumped, could lead to inaccurate readings, not to mention the biological samples and toxic carcinogenic reagents in the biosafety lab that should never be mishandled. If relocation is necessary, it should be done by the researchers themselves. Otherwise, how would you handle different biological samples stored in dozens of liquid nitrogen tanks? When a negative pressure laboratory is opened to the outside, do you know where the key disinfection points are? What if a mismanagement leads to a dangerous pathogen leak or the loss of precious experimental samples, would a few brains be able to bear the responsibility?
Moreover, moving to a new environment would require all evaluations and certifications to start over, essentially rebuilding a new facility.
The abrupt two-day notice from the Shanghai Public Health Center to relocate the laboratory essentially crosses the bottom line of public safety, aiming to dismantle and revoke this P3 laboratory.
If the laboratory’s research projects are interrupted, the graduations of the Fudan University graduate and doctoral students who have participated in these projects for years would be affected.
Zhang Yongzhen, without power or influence, has no means to protect the laboratory and his students who are as valuable as life itself. Besides lying in front of the door as a shield, he has no other choice.
In fact, Zhang Yongzhen has always been silently enduring and compromising in his daily life. If not for particular emergencies, he would not have made his situation public on Weibo.
In June 2023, while Zhang Yongzhen was away, security guards at the Shanghai Public Health Center threw away all his personal belongings from his office. Zhang Yongzhen endured it quietly.
There are rumors online that this series of disputes is related to a controversial contract and personnel dispute. However, that is just the surface.
The Shanghai Public Health Center, also known as the Fudan University-affiliated Public Health Clinical Center, formerly known as the Shanghai Infectious Disease Hospital, has a history of over a hundred years.
In March 2018, Zhang Yongzhen signed a five-year cooperation agreement with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, where he published research results as an adjunct professor at the Fudan University School of Life Sciences.
The current Party Secretary of the Public Health Center, Fan Xiaohong, cited the expiration of the five-year contract as a reason why Zhang Yongzhen should not “linger on.”
This claim has been denied by Zhang Yongzhen and his students. A researcher with the last name Chen in their team had a one-year contract with the center that did not end until June. Therefore, the Shanghai Public Health Center had no right to eject team members from the lab.
The contract dispute is just one reason the Shanghai Public Health Center found to evict Zhang Yongzhen. However, Zhang Yongzhen cannot leave now not only because the contract is not over.
In Zhang Yongzhen’s view, he was already a formal employee of the Public Health Center. Additionally, the Shanghai Public Health Center owes a total of over 10 million yuan in research funds and team members’ services fees. Until these issues are resolved, he cannot leave.
Zhang Yongzhen recounted that in 2018, he was a second-level professor at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The former leaders of the Shanghai Public Health Center, Zhu Tongyu and Lu Hongzhou, had invited him several times to build top research capabilities and had promised 3.5 million yuan in research funding annually to support his research. Feeling that he had found like-minded allies, Zhang agreed to the cooperation.
In 2020, Zhang Yongzhen completed the agreed-upon collaborative tasks and exceeded expectations by publishing several high-level research papers in international journals.
According to Chinese media reports, Zhang Yongzhen’s original unit—the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Institute of Infectious Disease Control and Prevention—agreed to the Shanghai Public Health Center’s request to transfer Zhang Yongzhen for full-time work and submitted his personal files to the Shanghai Public Health Center’s Human Resources Department on September 3, 2020.
Zhang Yongzhen stated that the Shanghai Public Health Center’s Institute Committee also approved his employment in October 2020.
Based on the CCP’s internal transfer policy, Zhang Yongzhen’s position had been transferred from the CDC to the Shanghai Public Health Center. All matters regarding his residence and social security, medical insurance, etc., should have been handled by the Shanghai Public Health Center. Zhang also believed that he was now a formal researcher at the Shanghai Public Health Center and could work there until retirement.
However, to this day, Zhang Yongzhen’s employment procedures have not been finalized. He is not clear on the internal reasons, but the loss of his position makes it difficult for him to accept. Without the position, he faces the dilemma of no support in his old age.
Due to not being officially employed, the Shanghai Public Health Center did not pay into his social insurance, and his social security benefits were interrupted for around two years. Without medical insurance, he had severe varicose veins in his legs and postponed surgery.
In 2021 and 2022, the former leaders of the Shanghai Public Health Center who valued Zhang Yongzhen were reassigned. With the arrival of new leadership, headed by Fan Xiaohong, support for Zhang Yongzhen’s research group was halted, obstructing their research, especially on the origins of COVID-19.
Some analysts believe that Zhang Yongzhen’s involvement in COVID-19 origin research made him a troublemaker in the eyes of the new leadership at the center.
It is well known that since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, the CCP authorities have been covering up the truth, hindering the World Health Organization from investigating the origin of the virus. The official CCP narrative attempts to control the description of the epidemic, suppress dissent, and refuse objective research to investigate the disease’s origin. As a result, the marginalization and troubles caused to Zhang Yongzhen for voluntarily publishing the virus genome sequence reach beyond retaliation, aiming to prevent him from continuing COVID-19 virus origin research.
In April 2020, the CCP authorities established new policies requiring all academic papers related to COVID-19 to undergo review before publication, with studies on virus origins facing additional scrutiny and requiring approval from central government officials.
Under the new restrictions, coronavirus research that contradicts official statements might be suppressed by the CCP authorities.
An anonymous Chinese researcher told the media that the efforts of the CCP government aim to control the narrative and depict the epidemic as not originating from China. “They will not truly tolerate any objective research to investigate the origin of this disease,” the source said.
Under the guidance of the CCP officials, a movement denying that the origin of COVID-19 was in China has been initiated. The main propaganda claims that the virus originated in the US, brought by the US military to China, or that the COVID-19 virus originated in Italy, India, and other places. The Chinese internet is rife with false articles, claiming that American lawyers are suing for compensation from the “King of Synthetic COVID-19,” American expert Ralph Baric, and the Chairman of the EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak.
In the current political climate in China, a scientist like Zhang Yongzhen, dedicated to serious virus research, seems to have lost his meaning of existence and faces increasingly challenging circumstances.
Holmes, familiar with Zhang Yongzhen, saw his partner’s heavy losses and believed that “in the past, before the COVID-19 pandemic… he was like a machine, but now the machine is broken.” He has slowly been crushed by these events.
– Produced by the “Person Truth” team