Chinese court hears US$53.5 billion Covid defamation case against US state of Missouri

A Chinese court has begun hearings in a defamation case filed by authorities and institutes in Beijing and Wuhan against the US state of Missouri over accusations tied to Covid-19.

In a notice on Monday, the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court said it held a hearing on Friday and legal proceedings were continuing.

The case was jointly filed on April 30, 2025 by the Wuhan government in Hubei province, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its subordinate entity, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), against Missouri and two of its former attorneys general, Eric Schmitt and Andrew Bailey.

The court accepted the case on May 7 that year. In the following December, the plaintiffs added Catherine Hanaway, Missouri’s current attorney general, as a co-defendant in the case.

The plaintiffs said the defendants “orchestrated, promoted and executed malicious and abusive litigation in the US, fabricated and disseminated false information and issued stigmatising and discriminatory remarks”, according to the court statement on Monday.

These actions had severely infringed upon the plaintiffs’ right of reputation and caused enormous losses, they added.

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Hanaway acknowledged receiving the court documents last December, the South China Morning Post previously reported.

Court documents showed that the Chinese parties were seeking 356.437 billion yuan (about US$53.5 billion) in compensation.

They also demanded that the US defendants apologise publicly on multiple platforms, including The New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, YouTube, as well as Chinese state media outlets People’s Daily and Xinhua.

On Friday, the Wuhan court held a hearing and legal proceedings were ongoing, it said.

The Chinese lawsuit forms part of ongoing tit-for-tat Covid-19 litigation between the two countries.

In 2020, Schmitt, then Missouri’s attorney general, filed a lawsuit against the Chinese government alleging that mainland officials had denied the risk of human-to-human transmission, silenced whistle-blowers and failed to contain the outbreak, allowing the contagion to spread globally.

At the time, Schmitt said he was seeking “recovery for the enormous loss of life, human suffering and economic turmoil experienced by all Missourians from the Covid-19 pandemic that has disrupted the entire world”.

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Other defendants in the lawsuit included China’s National Health Commission, the municipal government of Wuhan – where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected – and the WIV, which was the focus of lab leak allegations related to the pandemic’s origins.

The lab declared during the early days of the outbreak that it was “badly hurt” by conspiracy theories circulating online, including that the new virus strain had been “man-made” and “leaked from the WIV lab”, according to a statement at the time.

It added that other allegations included “the WIV was taken over by the military”, “a WIV researcher died from the leaked virus”, “a WIV student is patient zero” and “a WIV researcher reported to authorities that the WIV chief was responsible”.

In March last year, a US federal judge ruled that the Chinese government bore responsibility for concealing the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak and stockpiling protective equipment.

The judge entered a US$24.5 billion default judgment in favour of Missouri.