The state of Missouri has escalated its bid to seize Chinese assets in the US to collect a $24bn award in a case accusing Beijing of lying to the world about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Missouri asked the State Department to formally notify China that it intends to pursue assets fully or partially owned by the Chinese to satisfy the judgement given by district court judge Stephen Limbaugh in March.
The move stems from a lawsuit alleging China hoarded personal protective equipment during the early months of the pandemic, harming Missouri and its residents. A federal judge ruled for Missouri earlier this year after China declined to participate in the trial, calling the lawsuit “ very absurd ” when it was filed in 2020.
Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling, saying its actions during the pandemic aren’t subject to US jurisdiction.
Missouri’s attorney general, Catherine Hanaway, told reporters on Wednesday that she was compiling a list of properties and other assets owned by China’s government across the US.
The attempt to seize Chinese assets comes at a time when Washington’s relations with Beijing – which deteriorated rapidly after Donald Trump launched a tariff war – appear to be thawing following the president’s meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in South Korea.
In his first presidential term until 2020, Mr Trump demanded China pay $10 trillion in reparations to the world for the death and destruction caused by the pandemic. China said Mr Trump had “repeatedly ignored the facts and tried to shirk his responsibilities of failing to respond to the epidemic and tried to divert people’s attention”.
“China’s pattern of actions strongly suggests that it had knowledge of the existence and human-to-human transmission of the Covid virus as early as September 2019,” Judge Limbaugh said in his ruling.
“China’s actions also suggest that China engaged in a deliberate campaign to suppress information about the Covid pandemic in order to support its campaign to hoard PPE from Missouri and an unsuspecting world.”
Some legal experts doubt whether Missouri can collect on the award because federal law generally shields foreign nations from lawsuits in American courts.
At the peak of the pandemic, Lord Jim O’Neill argued that while China’s leaders would continue to live with the mistakes, it was “less clear why other countries think it is in their interest to keep referring to China’s initial errors, rather than working towards solutions”.
“For many governments, naming and shaming China appears to be a ploy to divert attention from their own lack of preparedness,” the former Chatham House chair added.
“Equally concerning is the growing criticism of the World Health Organization, not least by Donald Trump who has attacked the organization – and threatens to withdraw US funding – for supposedly failing to hold the Chinese government to account.”
An Associated Press report last year said the Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the very first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry.
There was little public discussion about the source of the disease, first reported from the central city of Wuhan in December 2019. That pattern continues to this day, according to the news agency, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out, and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.
The agency said health officials in Beijing closed the lab of a scientist who sequenced the virus as early as 6 January 2020 and barred other researchers from working with him.
In Missouri, Ms Hanaway told reporters that it had been a “long process for us to be able to enforce that judgment, but now we will enforce that judgment, much like any other judgment in this area”.
She added that Missouri would not try to take assets from companies owned by Chinese citizens or businesses.
“I might be proven wrong over time, but my belief is that we have got to go after those assets actually owned by China,” she said. “We think the state was damaged. We want to recover. It costs money to provide health care and other benefits to people as a result of the epidemic.”
As a first step, Ms Hanaway’s office sent a letter on Wednesday to a federal court asking it to forward copies of the judgment to the secretary of state’s office to be served on China.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said Beijing’s policies and measures during the pandemic were “acts of national sovereignty and are not subject to the jurisdiction of US courts.”
“The so-called pandemic compensation lawsuits fabricated by certain forces in the US ignore basic objective facts and violate fundamental legal principles,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. “They are purely malicious frivolous lawsuits and political manipulation, with extremely sinister intentions. China firmly opposes them and will not accept any so-called default judgments.”
The case was initially dismissed by Judge Limbaugh in 2022, saying Missouri could not sue China or the other defendants. But an appeals court allowed one part of the suit to proceed: the allegation that China had hoarded personal protective equipment such as respirator masks, medical gowns and gloves.
After Chinese officials didn’t respond, Judge Limbaugh accepted Missouri’s estimate of past and potential future damages of nearly $8bn, tripled it as federal law allowed, and added 3.91 per cent interest until it was collected.
The lawsuit was originally filed by former state attorney general Eric Schmitt, a Trump ally who subsequently won election to the US Senate.
