Chinese defector first with the truth on spread of Covid

It was at a party in Washington when a defector with information about a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan divulged what he knew to a senior Trump administration figure.

Human rights activist Dimon Liu in Washington. Picture: Allison Shelley

It was at a Chinese New Year’s party in Washington DC when a defector with information about a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan divulged what he knew to a senior figure in the Trump ­administration.

Human rights activist Dimon Liu knew she needed to connect one of her oldest friends in the Chinese dissident community, Wei Jingsheng, who is known as the ­father of China’s democracy movement, with Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger.

What Pottinger learned that night changed the course of history. It prompted him to, just days later, meet with the president in the Oval Office and mount the case to ban travel from China – a bid that was initially ridiculed by health officials, including the top coronavirus adviser to the president, Anthony Fauci.

Dimon has recounted the events that unfolded at the Chinese New Year’s party at her home in early 2020 in a new podcast for The Australian called What Really Happened in Wuhan. It is based on interviews that took place for the book and documentary of the same name.

Dimon grew up in China during the Great Leap Forward, nearly starving to death as a child. She escaped with a falsified visa, initially to Hong Kong, and then forged a career and life in the US.

She connected with Wei in 1997 after his release from 18 years in Chinese prisons, where he was thrown for objecting to the communist regime. It was the man who would become her husband, Bob Suettinger, a CIA agent and ­national security official in the Clinton White House, who managed to negotiate Wei’s release.

Wei’s plight had attracted global attention and he became a lightning rod for whistleblowers who had information about events unfolding in China.

“Wei being who he is tends to be the recipient of many information, people seek him out – and he saw the danger (of the coronavirus) way before I did,” said Dimon.

Wei had been passed Dimon’s number when he was briefly ­released from prison in China, and in the US they became close friends.

He visited Dimon home for dinner on November 22, 2019, and told them there was a coronavirus spreading in Wuhan. “There was an urgency about Wei’s manner,” Dimon recalls in The Australian’s podcast.

“That night was a little bit ­different because he talked in an almost a different tone and he ­talked almost non-stop.

“I was in listening mode, but in a way I couldn’t quite believe what he was saying.”

Six weeks later, on January 2, 2020, Wei turned up unannounced. From the moment he walked through the door, he could speak of little else other than the coronavirus.

“He said people are getting sicker and more people are getting sick. That was also the time that doctors who knew something were silenced. Wei was hearing that,” Dimon said.

“Wei realised that things are getting more serious. I could see that he was worried. He has put his life on the line protecting other people so I see the seriousness of the situation, but frankly I didn’t know what to do.”

After Wei’s visit, Dimon wrote a memo to send to Pottinger – a memo she reads aloud in The Australian’s podcast. But she didn’t send it.

“I have to say I did not take it all that seriously. Neither on November 22 nor on January 2 dinner ­because I always thought it would be easy to contain,” she said.

Instead, Dimon decided to connect Pottinger and Wei directly at her Chinese New Year party on January 25, 2020.

The story of what unfolded that night and the chain of events it sparked is detailed in the book, What Really Happened in Wuhan. Investigativejournalist Sharri Markson goes deep into the secret history of Covid-19. In a series of exclusive interviews – from Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo to intelligence chiefs and Chinese dissidents – Markson takes us inside the investigation behind her best-selling book and documentary, to explore what really happened in Wuhan and beyond.

theaustralian.com.au/wuhan