TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — An anonymous spokesperson from the U.S. State Department refuted claims that the U.S. asked Taiwan to secretly develop bioweapons, after a report was published in local media citing secret government discussions in 2022.
The anonymous spokesperson told CNA on Wednesday (July 12) that there is no truth to the report. The spokesperson said that the U.S. is compliant with the Biological Weapons Convention (that effectively bans bioweapons), and it does not support any other actor to develop them.
The report has also been refuted by Taiwan’s defense ministry, which was the subject of the claims, as well as the U.S.’s de facto embassy in Taiwan and Taiwan’s foreign ministry.
The ministry released a statement on Tuesday, confirming its plans to build new biosafety research and development facilities for defense purposes. However, the statement said its medical defense research is only focused on pathogen detection and prevention, and defense against biological weapons.
The report was published on July 9 in UDN, a major news outlet in Taiwan. The report claimed that the U.S. had urged Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense to use its National Defense Medical Center to "secretly establish virus research and development capabilities" and develop "biological warfare agents."
The Biological Weapons Convention prevents the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use of biological and toxic weapons. The convention was made available for countries to sign in 1972 and has been almost universally adopted, with 185 parties as signatories.
The U.S. was an early adopter of the treaty after the Nixon administration decided to end the development of offensive biological weapons in 1969.
Taiwan declared its intention to honor the convention (as the Republic of China) before it was removed from the list of signatories after it lost the United Nations seat of China to the People’s Republic of China in 1971. However, despite not being an official signatory, Taiwan has stated it will continue to abide by the convention rules.
