A Chinese virologist who became the face of the COVID-19 lab-origin theory is now living in hiding in the United States, convinced Beijing is trying to lure her back to China to silence her permanently, according to a new New York Times report.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, once a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong, fled to the U.S. in 2020 after publicly claiming that the Chinese government engineered and intentionally released the coronavirus. Her accusations made her a star on conservative media, but Yan now says they also made her a target for the Chinese Communist Party.

“For over five years, the CCP has used my parents and Mahen as tools to lure me back, attempting to carry out a ‘perfect crime,’” Yan told the Times, alleging that Chinese authorities are weaponizing her family to pressure her return.

Yan’s husband, veteran virologist Ranawaka Perera, says Yan grew increasingly consumed by online influencers who promoted her as a whistleblower. Some, including YouTuber Wang Dinggang, helped engineer her escape with support from a foundation tied to Steve Bannon and exiled billionaire Guo Wengui.

Once in the U.S., Yan became a fixture on the MAGA media circuit, including repeated appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, amplifying claims that scientists manufactured the virus in a Wuhan lab. Bannon later credited her with fueling the rise of the lab-leak narrative: “A lot of it was because of Dr. Yan.”

But Yan’s scientific credibility collapsed quickly. Her paper alleging COVID’s deliberate engineering was rejected by experts across the scientific community, and Hong Kong University stressed she was a junior researcher with limited experience.

Still, her fears of CCP retaliation are not unfounded. In 2023, Yan was named as a victim in a federal criminal complaint accusing Chinese police of running a transnational repression scheme inside the U.S. And earlier this year, Google alerted her to a likely state-sponsored hacking attempt targeting her accounts.

The virologist now lives in isolation, estranged from her family in China. Perera, who traveled to the U.S. in hopes of finding her, says he only wants to know she is safe.

“I just want to talk to her directly,” he told the Times. “If she’s safe and doesn’t want to be with me, I can move on. But not until I know exactly what happened.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)