The China aspect is probably a red herring. Gain-of-function research was internationally funded, including by the US. The perils had been pointed out for years by virologists [1], some of whom managed to get an editorial in the New York Times against it [2].
If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with the institutions and individuals that pushed it despite the risks. No one knows the answer to this (edit: I mean to whether covid escaped from a lab), but it's an open question that deserves credible investigation. Having the investigator be one of the principal funders of the research being investigated is such...bad optics, to put it nicely, that one wonders how anyone thought that would be ok.
If Covid turns out to be a lab escape (which is a big if), the nation or lab it happened in is just the proximate cause. Deeper responsibility would lie with the institutions and individuals that pushed it despite the risks. No one knows the answer to this (edit: I mean to whether covid escaped from a lab), but it's an open question that deserves credible investigation. Having the investigator be one of the principal funders of the research being investigated is such...bad optics, to put it nicely, that one wonders how anyone thought that would be ok.
[1] https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00360-12
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/an-enginee...