China’s state-run Global Times dismissed on Wednesday a lawsuit against the communist dictatorship by the state of Missouri as a “farce” and “publicity stunt” that will never result in China paying reparations for allowing the Chinese coronavirus outbreak to become a pandemic.

Missouri prosecutors filed a lawsuit in the state’s Eastern District Tuesday against the government of China for “ruining lives and damaging the public order and economy of the State of Missouri.” The lawsuit, which is in preliminary stages, will demand as much as $44 billion in reparations for the state, citing both health and economic damages to Missourans.

“This is completely a farce. Missouri is trying to hold China accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic in a US court, which is almost impossible to succeed,” the Global Times protested. “It should at least file a lawsuit in an international court and in accordance with international law, not the laws of the U.S.”

China regularly ignores international court rulings. Most recently, in 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ruled China’s claims in the South China Sea illegal. Beijing ignored the ruling and has continued to construct illegal facilities on Vietnamese and Philippine territory. This week, the Communist Party issued an edict giving dozens of locations in the South China Sea Chinese names.

The Times declared the lawsuit “impossible to win” and flatly stated of the possibility that China would pay Missouri economic compensation for allowing the virus to cause a pandemic, “this will never happen.”

“China’s anti-virus achievements are obvious. Missouri’s lawsuit will not have any legal impact on China. We need to be vigilant to see if the U.S. turns the lawsuit into persecution and discrimination against Chinese Americans,” the propaganda outlet contended. “There have been several anti-Chinese chapters in U.S. history. This time, it is led by a U.S. government.”

The article also bizarrely claimed the lawsuit was intended to keep Americans from noticing “the collapse of crude oil prices,” which made headlines in every major American outlet in the country for most of the week.

The Global Times predicted the lawsuit would not result in similar claims in the rest of the country, not acknowledging a campaign in Congress led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) to pass legislation to waive China’s sovereign immunity for coronavirus reparations lawsuits. It also repeatedly the unsubstantiated claim that scientists do not know where the virus originated; legitimate science researchers agree the virus originated in Wuhan, China, late last year.

The Global Times article presented a more belligerent version of the response to the Missouri lawsuit from China’s Foreign Ministry.

“This kind of ‘lawsuit’ has no factual or legal basis. It only invites ridicule,” spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Wednesday. “Such lawsuit is nothing short of frivolous litigation which defies the basic theory of the law. Based on the principle of sovereign equality prescribed by international law, US courts have no jurisdiction over the sovereign actions taken by Chinese governments of all levels in response to the epidemic.”

“The right course of action for the US side is to dismiss this abusive lawsuit,” Geng concluded.

Missouri’s lawsuit is based on ample available information indicating that the Chinese Communist Party had reason to believe the Wuhan coronavirus was highly contagious for weeks before it revealed its existence to the world. Doctors in the central Chinese city began warning of a contagious disease spreading in late December and early January, resulting in their arrest and disappearance. One of those doctors, Li Wenliang, died under mysterious circumstances in February; China claimed he succumbed to the virus at age 34. Another doctor, Ai Fen, disappeared for weeks before resurfacing in a strange hostage video on Chinese social media.

Researchers have concluded that China’s Communist Party could have prevented as many as 95 percent of global coronavirus infections, but acted otherwise.

The result has been widespread distrust of the Communist Party in America, where at press time over 45,000 people have died after being infected. An April Harris poll found that 77 percent of Americans questioned blame China directly for the pandemic; 90 percent of those identifying as Republicans agreed with that sentiment, while 67 percent of Democrats also did.

“We need to start by forcing China to pay the burden and the cost incurred on the United States of America due to the coronavirus. I think there are many ways that we can do that,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), an advocate for China to pay coronavirus reparations, said in March.

Banks told Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM last week that he supports using the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to put China on trial. The ICJ is a venue for the exclusive use of states to sue each other, as opposed to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has the power to try individuals for only two types of crimes: crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Outside of the United States, calls to put China on trial for the pandemic have come from, among other places, Germany and Australia.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.