Mysterious murder of Chinese scientist in US leaves many questions unanswered

Mysterious murder of Chinese scientist in US leaves many questions unanswered

Bing Liu was close to revealing promising findings about coronavirus when murdered inside his own home

by InfoBrics

May 13, 2020

Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro…

Last week, Chinese scientist Bing Liu was shot and killed inside his home in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, USA. The researcher was a doctor of computer science at the National University of Singapore and lived and worked in the US, more specifically at the University of Pittsburgh, where he developed a research project on the new coronavirus. Recently, the scientist had announced some “important discoveries” about the virus, but he did not reveal the real nature of the topic. The researcher’s unexpected and violent murder in his own home brought some questions about such discoveries.

The identity of Bing Liu’s killer is already known: Hao Gu, a 46-year-old man whose body was found in the surrounding area shortly after the crime, indicating the occurrence of a suicide. According to reports of preliminary investigations by the American police, the crime has a passionate nature and a deeply intimate reason, showing no relation to the theme of the virus or his research. Following protocol by the American police, due to the fact that Gu and Liu were not American citizens, the case was transferred to US federal authorities for investigation.

The University of Pittsburgh issued a statement saying it “is deeply saddened by the tragic death of Bing Liu, a prolific researcher and admired colleague of Pitt.” According to the institution, the researcher was trying to understand “the cellular mechanisms underlying the SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of complications”.

The whole dynamics of the crime seems to be surprising. It is minimally curious that a personal relationship of the researcher has led to such a tragic result, taking the lives of two men, precisely in the midst of promising laboratory investigations that would lead to discoveries about the new coronavirus. A truly tragic coincidence that, by itself, cannot lead to any conclusion outside the police reports themselves, but, when taken in its proper global context, can lead to legitimate suspicions. For reasons far less convincing and absolutely unfounded, the American government formally accuses China of having produced and developed the new coronavirus in laboratory as a biological weapon. Such a speech is no longer identified as a “conspiracy theory”. So, what is the reason for considering “conspiracy” the suspicion of a political nature behind the crime against Professor Bing Liu?

As exhaustively treated in the previously, the global pandemic of the new coronavirus brought with it the emergence of a new arms race: the pharmaceutical race. In this race, nations are facing the development of pharmacological research to obtain faster and more efficient results against the new evils of our times. This new arms race has a civil-military dimension and is equally noticeable among States, corporations and international organizations, being a common target for all the global agents of our age. In fact, we do not know exactly what Liu discovered and it is likely that we will never know it, but, certainly, his research had some high degree of scientific relevance and strategic interest, so, believing that there is a political and strategic reason for Liu’s murder is fully consistent. If his findings about the cellular mechanisms of the infection were relevant to the development of a cure for COVID-19, Liu may actually have been the victim of a political attack or of an intelligence-level operation, aimed at preventing the publication of his findings, which are now adrift and can be stolen and patented by other international agents.