China

The Chinese Communist Party has maintained since June 1989 that deaths in Tiananmen Square were negligible or near zero. Declassified diplomatic cables — including a 1989 UK ambassador Alan Donald cable released in 2017 — estimated more than 10,000 dead. The Chinese Red Cross initially reported 2,600+ before retracting the figure under pressure. PLA 27th and 38th Group Armies were documented as the principal suppression forces. The CCP has maintained continuous censorship of June 4 references, including "May 35th" and other circumlocutions, to the present day. The cover-up is confirmed by converging diplomatic, humanitarian, and journalistic evidence.

On 7 May 1999, during NATO's Operation Allied Force air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a US B-2 bomber struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists — Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Zhu Ying — and injuring others (reports of the number range from 15 to 27). The Clinton administration and NATO apologised, attributing the strike to a CIA targeting error: outdated maps and a flawed method of locating the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (Yugoimport) led targeters to mistake the embassy for it. In October 1999, The Observer and Politiken published an investigation, based on anonymous sources, claiming the strike was deliberate because NATO had detected the embassy relaying Yugoslav army communications. CIA Director George Tenet apologised to Congress. The incident severely damaged US-China relations and triggered protests at US diplomatic missions across China.

The hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a research-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) rather than from a natural zoonotic spillover at the Huanan seafood market.