China’s Covid Countersuit
January 15, 2026
As the Covid pandemic raged in 2020, plaintiffs began filing suits in U.S. courts seeking damages from the People’s Republic of China and other Chinese defendants. In March 2025, a U.S. district court awarded the State of Missouri a default judgment for $24 billion against nine Chinese defendants. In November 2025, another district court awarded the State of Mississippi a default judgment for $25 billion against five of the same defendants. Both judgments were based on claims that the defendants hoarded personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic.
In December, Missouri’s attorney general announced that three of the Chinese defendants had filed a countersuit against the State of Missouri and two of its former attorneys general. The complaint, filed in Wuhan’s Intermediate People’s Court on April 30, 2025 by the Wuhan city government, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, alleges that the defendants injured the plaintiffs’ reputations and seeks apologies and nearly $51 billion in damages for economic harms. In this post, I examine the Chinese countersuit, the plaintiffs’ possible motivations for bringing it, and explain how the suit may complicate the U.S. states’ efforts to collect their judgments.
The Countersuit
The Chinese countersuit is an action for defamation. The plaintiffs allege that the State of Missouri and its former attorneys general Eric Schmitt (now a U.S. senator) and Andrew Bailey (now co-deputy director of the F.B.I.) “fabricated … disinformation” that China covered up information about Covid and hoarded PPE. The plaintiffs allege that such disinformation harmed the reputation and business environment of Wuhan “resulting in huge economic losses including fiscal revenue decrease and fiscal expenditure increase.” The plaintiffs further allege that the disinformation harmed the reputation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, “adversely affect[ing] their international cooperation, block[ing] productivity and commercialization of scientific and technological achievements, [and] causing serious denigration to brand value and academic reputation.”
The complaint invokes several provisions of China’s Civil Code. Article 110 provides that “[a] legal person or an unincorporated organization enjoys the right to entity name, the right to reputation, and the right to honor.” Article 1024 further states that “[n]o organization or individual may infringe upon [an]other’s right to reputation by insultation [sic], defamation, or the like.” Article 1165 authorizes tort liability, with Articles 1168 and 1169 providing for joint and several liability and aiding and abetting liability, respectively. It is worth pointing out that there is nothing unusual about these provisions. Similar defamation claims could be brought under U.S. law, although defendants in U.S. courts would likely be able to claim protection under state statutes creating privileges for assertions made in litigation as well as protection under the First Amendment.
There is a presumption that foreign states are immune from suit in the courts of both China and the United States. Missouri’s and Mississippi’s lawsuits were brought under the commercial activity exception of the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), on the theory that hoarding PPE is a commercial activity. The Chinese countersuit relies on the territorial tort exception in China’s Foreign State Immunity Law (FSIL). As I have explained here, China’s FSIL applies not just to constituent parts of foreign states (like Missouri) but also to foreign officials exercising sovereign authority (like former state attorneys general). Territorial tort exceptions are common in the laws of other countries—the U.S. FSIA has one too. (I explain the differences between the U.S. exception and the Chinese one here.)
Article 9 of China’s FSIL provides: “A foreign state does not enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of PRC courts in litigation for compensation arising from personal injury or death or damage to movable or immovable property caused by the relevant act of the foreign state in PRC territory.” The initial draft of the law was ambiguous about whether the act, the injury, or both had to occur in China. But the final law removed that ambiguity, making clear that the exception applies only when “the relevant act” occurs in China. This is a potential problem for the plaintiffs, because it is not clear that Missouri or its attorneys general engaged in any conduct in China.
Another possibility would be for China to rely on the FSIL’s reciprocity provision. Article 21 states: “Where foreign states accord the PRC and its property narrower immunity than is provided by this Law, the PRC will apply the principle of reciprocity.” The plaintiffs could argue that the U.S. district court in the Missouri case granted the Chinese defendants less immunity than the FSIL provides (which is almost certainly true) and therefore Chinese court can respond by according the defendants in this case less immunity. Whether such an argument would work depends on how broadly Chinese courts interpret “reciprocity.” Chinese courts would not be relying on the same exception to immunity that the U.S. courts invoked. In any event, given the political stakes, I do not expect sovereign immunity to be a significant barrier to the countersuit.
Sovereign immunity may, however, be a significant barrier to enforcing a judgment. Articles 13 and 14 of the FSIL provide that the property of a foreign state shall be immune from execution (“compulsory measures”) unless the foreign state has (1) waived such immunity; (2) earmarked property for execution; or (3) “to enforce an effective merits or procedural ruling of a PRC court, judicial compulsory measures are taken against the property of the foreign state that is located in PRC territory, used for commercial activities, and connected to the litigation.” The Missouri defendants are not going to waive immunity or earmark property, which leaves only the third exception. I suspect that neither the State of Missouri nor its former attorney generals have property in the PRC, and even if they do, it seems doubtful that such property would be connected to the alleged defamation. Thus, it seems unlikely that a Chinese judgment against these defendants would be enforceable (unless Missouri starts seizing Chinese property in the United States to enforce its own judgment, about which I say more below).
The Plaintiffs’ Motivations
One might ask why the plaintiffs would bring such a suit in Chinese courts if the prospects of collecting a judgment are so small. I suspect that the plaintiffs’ motives are largely political and symbolic.
The same was true, of course, with respect to Missouri’s original suit. Because the Chinese defendants did not appear to defend against Missouri’s claims, the state was able to tell its side of the story unchallenged. The district court accepted the allegations “that China engaged in a deliberate campaign to suppress information about the COVID-19 pandemic in order to support its campaign to hoard PPE from Missouri and an unsuspecting world.”
The Chinese countersuit will allow the plaintiffs to tell China’s story. “As soon as cases of pneumonia of unknown cause were identified in Wuhan,” the complaint states, “China promptly reported the situation, acted immediately to conduct investigations and to stop the spread of the disease.” China also “sent updates on the pandemic to the international community at the earliest possible time.” The complaint continues:
In 2020, [the] Chinese government, including [the Wuhan city government] organized 38 medical expert teams and sent them to 34 countries to assist in pandemic control. Since 2020, China has sent more than 3,000 medical workers in 176 teams on foreign aid missions to 57 countries. From January 2020 to May 2022, China donated COVID-19 response supplies to 15 international organizations and 153 countries, including the US.
As in the U.S. suit, these allegations are likely to go unchallenged, since it is unlikely that any of the defendants will appear. And the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court is likely to accept the allegations uncritically, just as the U.S. court did.
Complicating the States’ Enforcement Efforts
As I discussed in November, Missouri has announced that it is serving its judgment on six of the nine defendants, a step required before it can execute the judgment against any of their property. Once this is complete, Missouri says it will “begin seizing Chinese-owned assets, including real property, financial interests, and other holdings tied to the defendants.” As I have noted before, Missouri cannot execute its judgment against property that is simply “Chinese-owned”—the property must be owned by one of the defendants. Moreover, under the U.S. FSIA, the property in the United States of the foreign-state defendants (the only ones Missouri is serving with the judgment) is immune from execution unless it was used for the commercial activity on which the claim was based. Missouri cannot, for example, go after treasury securities owned by the Chinese government unless they were used to hoard PPE.
But what if Missouri does go after farmland in Missouri owed by Chinese entities other than the defendants and convinces a U.S. court to order its seizure? This would, in the first instance, be a taking of property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. It would also be an expropriation in violation of international law for which China could impose countermeasures.
And what if Missouri tries to seize treasury securities owned by the Chinese government? China could then rely on the reciprocity provision of the FSIL (discussed above) to deny immunity from execution to U.S.-owned property in China that would otherwise be immune from execution on the ground that the United States denied China immunity from execution to which it is entitled. Having a judgment for defamation to enforce against U.S. property would make this response more plausible. China’s response would not necessarily be limited to property owned by Missouri, either, since the United States is internationally responsible for Missouri’s actions. In short, Missouri’s efforts to enforce its judgment could potentially put a range of U.S. assets in China at risk.
Conclusion
On one level, China’s Covid countersuit is an understandable response to Missouri’s judgment against it. On another level, it is an unfortunate escalation. “[T]his all seems to be a lot of unhelpful political theater,” Chimène Keitner told the Missouri Independent, “with no clear off-ramp for either side to save face.”