The WIV Was the Main Partner in the German-Chinese Virology Network

In my last article, I wrote about HIV research which was being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the aegis of the German-Chinese virology project, which would give rise to a full-fledged German-Chinese virology lab in Wuhan on the other side of the Yangtze River. The research involved genetic engineering and precisely that part of the AIDS virus elements of which would turn up as so-called HIV inserts in SARS-CoV-2. It was the presence of these elements which led the late French virologist and discoverer of HIV Luc Montagnier to conclude that the virus had been created in a lab.

But just how big of a role did the Wuhan Institute play in the German-Chinese virology partnership in general? Well, on closer inspection, a very big role indeed: so big that it is fair to say that it was de facto the main Chinese partner. The longstanding official Chinese partner institution of Essen University Hospital, whose virology department coordinated the network, is rather Tongji Medical College in Wuhan, which is in turn part of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). The HUST is also the Chinese co-sponsor of the German-Chinese virology lab at the HUST-affiliated Union Hospital in Wuhan.

The collective seal of the “transregional research centre”, TR660, can be seen below. The large seal at the top left is that of Essen University Hospital. The large seal at the top right is that of the HUST.

The smaller seal with the abstract green-and-purple motif is that of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here is a closer look.

But consider the actual personnel affiliated with the “transregional centre”. TRR60 ran for nine years, from 2009 to 2018, split into two funding periods. The funding came from the German Research Foundation and the Chinese Natural Science Foundation. The complete list of members for the second funding period, which started in 2014, is available here.

Fully one-third of the principal investigators based in China, four out of twelve, were at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They include none other than Xinwen Chen, who was at the time the director of the WIV, as well as Rongge Yang and Binlian Sun, the researchers whose work on the HIV envelope protein gp120 maps onto the HIV inserts. The HUST had five senior members of the research team, so one more than the Wuhan Institute.

But now look at the Chinese post-docs affiliated with the project.

More than half, seven out of 12, were based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology!

It is hardly surprising, then, that when Ulf Dittmer, the coordinator of the German-Chinese network, organised a Sino-German virology symposium in Berlin in 2015 (which I’ve written about here), the WIV was given pride of place, as the below group photo of the participants makes clear.

The small, buck-toothed man with the blue striped tie at the front is Xinwen Chen, the then-Director of the WIV. The woman with the short hair and glasses, also at the front on the opposite side of the stairs, is Zhengli Shi, the WIV’s now world-famous bat coronavirus researcher. The young woman with the long hair to Shi’s right and one stair down appears to be Yanyi Wang, who would succeed Chen as the director of the WIV. The man to Shi’s left is, of course, none other than Christian Drosten, the German designer of the “gold standard” SARS-CoV-2 PCR protocol who, in a 2021 interview, would innocently claim that he had “no personal connection” to the coronavirus researchers at the WIV. (See my article here.) The bald man in the middle of the photo is Ulf Dittmer.

It should be noted the German-Chinese collaboration would continue not only in the form of the physical German-Chinese virology lab at Union Hospital in Wuhan, but also in the form of a so-called Sino-German Virtual Institute for Viral Immunology (SGVIVI) under the direction of Ulf Dittmer and encompassing many of the former principal investigators in the “transregional centre” TRR60. Both Xinwen Chen and Rongge Yang continue to be members of the successor network.

Great efforts have been made to connect U.S.-based academic or research institutions to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, much of them focused, of course, on the EcoHealth Alliance’s 2018 DEFUSE proposal, which did indeed include the WIV as partner. But DEFUSE was not funded, and the similar CREID network, which was funded, precisely did not include the WIV (and did not get underway until 2020 to boot, i.e., after the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan).

Here, on the other hand, we have a full-fledged, publicly-funded German-Chinese “transregional research centre” which clearly involves a massive presence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, comprising no fewer than 11 scientists who were based there. There was no need for mysterious leaks or arduous FOI requests to find this out. The relevant information is publicly available on the website of the University of Duisburg-Essen – and it is conveniently available in English no less.

Germany does in fact have its own Freedom of Information Act, though it is relatively young (dating from just 2005) and untested. Imagine what else we might find out if anyone did successfully FOIA the pertinent documents from the university or the German Research Foundation.

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.