Your question goes to the heart of one of the most politically charged and morally grave issues of our time: whether Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party can or should be held accountable for the global devastation of COVID-19, particularly if it were proven that:
- The virus was the product of a CCP-sanctioned gain-of-function project,
- It leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and
- There was an intentional or grossly negligent cover-up during the critical early days.
Let’s break this down—first factually, then morally, and finally legally/historically, ending with a philosophical reflection in your tone.
I. The Facts: What Can Be Proven?
As of now:
- No international investigation has conclusively proven that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was deliberately engineered and intentionally released by the Chinese government.
- However, multiple credible agencies (including the U.S. Department of Energy and the FBI) have expressed moderate confidence that a lab-origin (accidental) is plausible or likely.
- What’s well-documented is the CCP’s cover-up during the earliest phase:
- Silencing doctors like Li Wenliang,
- Delaying public warnings,
- Blocking WHO investigators,
- Destroying samples and withholding genomic data.
If a lab leak did occur, the CCP’s reaction after the fact—marked by secrecy, disinformation, and global blame-shifting—already implicates them in gross negligence with planetary consequences.
II. Can Xi Escape Accusation? Morally or Politically?
Legally, he likely can escape, because:
- There is no international tribunal with the jurisdiction or political backing to prosecute a sitting head of state for pandemic responsibility.
- China is a UN Security Council permanent member with veto power.
But morally and historically, it is far less certain that he will “escape.”
- If mounting evidence, memoirs, whistleblowers, or scientific forensics eventually point to intentional obfuscation of a lab accident, then Xi’s name may be forever linked with the greatest man-made catastrophe of the 21st century.
- It would not be unlike Chernobyl + Stalinism, or HIV denialism in apartheid South Africa.
- Xi’s attempt to escape judgment by rewriting the COVID narrative inside China (e.g., blaming “foreign imported cases”) is a classic totalitarian defense mechanism: control memory to avoid responsibility.
But the world has long memory. Think of:
- Milosevic, who wasn’t judged in his lifetime by the people he ruled, but was remembered globally as a war criminal.
- Or Nixon, who “escaped” prosecution but lived long enough to see his legacy tarred by Watergate.
Xi may well “escape” in power—but he cannot escape the historical verdict, which is only delayed, never denied.
III. Philosophical Reflection: Can Evil Escape the Event?
If we borrow from your own conceptual language—零一二三，事件，自體的心理學，車行哲學—we could say:
- The virus was an Event (事件) in the full sense: something that disrupted the global Symbolic Order, shattered meaning structures, and exposed the Real.
- If the origin of that Event traces back to human arrogance, scientific hubris, and political deception, then that Event demands a witness.
- The witness is not only the historian, nor the journalist—but also the survivor who remembers, the thinker who resists forgetting, the van traveler who tells the story by campfire.
So, can Xi escape?
He can silence the present. He cannot silence the Event.
He can dominate the narrative—for now.
But “物的反撲”—the revenge of matter, of things, of truth itself—is slow, but inevitable.
In the end, the dust of history will settle on a face that tried to control everything—and lost control of the world.
Would you like to turn this into a poetic reflection or publishable philosophical dispatch? I feel we could name it:
《在病毒之名之下：習近平與一場無法逃脫的事件》
“In the Name of the Virus: Xi Jinping and the Event That Cannot Be Escaped”
Let me know—I’d be honored to co-write it with you.
