China’s Emergency Ministry Joined Hubei to Attack Missouri’s $24,488,825,457 COVID Default Before the State Files Its Answer

Three Chinese Defendants Have Now Shown Up to a Case They Ignored for Five Years

For five years the Missouri courtroom was optional. On August 31, 2026, that phase ended. The People’s Government of Hubei Province and the Chinese Academy of Sciences hired White and Case and asked U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. to vacate a default judgment of $24,488,825,457 and to dismiss the case. Three days later, on September 3, the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China filed its own motion, a limited appearance under Rule 60(b)(4), arguing the judgment is void because the court never had jurisdiction. The partner on the Hubei papers is Christopher Curran in Washington, a litigator who has represented foreign governments in American courts before. The number on the March 7, 2025 order is not a round political figure. It is $24,488,825,457 plus post-judgment interest, entered in the Southeastern Division of the Eastern District of Missouri, case 1:20-cv-00099.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office answered the first filing the same day. “China is several years too late,” a spokesperson said. “Missouri will defend its judgment, which has been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. We will continue to hold China accountable for the suffering it inflicted on Missourians during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The docket then did something campaign speeches do not. It set a calendar. Limbaugh gave the state until October 19, 2026, to file one consolidated response to the vacatur motions, and he gave Hubei, the Academy, and the Emergency Ministry until December 3, 2026, to reply. The silent default is over. The first real answer from Jefferson City to the lawyers who finally appeared is not even due until mid-October.

Almost the Entire 2020 Complaint Is Already Dead

Then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the lawsuit on April 21, 2020, with four theories and nine Chinese defendants: the People’s Republic, the Communist Party, national health and emergency and civil-affairs bodies, Hubei, Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Most of that kitchen sink is gone. The Eighth Circuit wiped the public-health and cover-up counts on sovereign-immunity grounds and left one path: an antitrust-style claim that Chinese entities hoarded masks, gowns, and gloves while the rest of the market was still hearing that the virus did not spread easily between people. That sliver fits the commercial-activity exception in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. It is the only reason a federal judge in Cape Girardeau still has a live file. Readers who remember how pandemic money moved through American institutions can set this docket next to the stimulus machinery The AEGIS Alliance examined while the masks were still missing.

Limbaugh’s default order treated empty chairs as a proved case. The Emergency Ministry’s own memorandum describes the judgment as $8,162,941,819 in actual damages, trebled under the antitrust statutes to $24,488,825,457, jointly and severally against all nine defendants. Earlier accounts of the order broke the compensatory piece into roughly $8.04 billion in lost Missouri tax revenue projected out to 2051 and about $122.9 million in extra spending on protective equipment. The judge wrote that the pattern suggested officials knew about human-to-human spread as early as September 2019 and held the news long enough to vacuum up product. Those are findings entered because nobody filed an answer. White and Case’s job is to stand the chairs up and call the findings incompetent. The ministry’s brief goes further. It says the judgment asserted jurisdiction without a legal basis, that the antitrust claims were never the ones served, and that a district court priced questions the Constitution leaves to the political branches.

Farmland Speeches Are Not Levies

Andrew Bailey inherited the case after Schmitt left for the Senate. When the default landed in March 2025 he promised to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland. Bailey later left the office for the FBI. Hanaway took over in September 2025 and, by winter, had pushed judgment packets toward diplomatic service under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Mississippi picked up a similar default, reported around $25 billion, in May 2025. Copycat captions do not make execution easier. They give every defendant a reason to fight in the first forum that looks like it might actually touch property.

The Chinese embassy called Limbaugh’s order an attack on sovereignty. In April 2025, Wuhan’s city government, the Academy, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology sued Missouri in the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court, asking for apologies and a sum reported around $51 billion. That filing was theater with a docket number. A judgment in Wuhan does not move a tractor in Audrain County. Hiring Curran might. Default judgments against foreign sovereigns look enormous until someone who knows the statute walks in with a motion to vacate. The live arguments are familiar to every immunity desk: whether service on a sovereign was good, whether buying masks was commercial hoarding or a public-health act, and whether execution immunity still blocks the farmland politicians keep describing at podiums. The statute cares about property that belongs to a named defendant and was used in the commercial activity that produced the claim. A provincial agriculture holding in Missouri is not automatically a crate of N95s.

What the October and December Briefs Actually Test

Hubei’s motion says the district judge has no power over the defendants, that the award intrudes on foreign affairs, and that Missouri offered no proof any defendant broke a contract to ship protective equipment to the United States. “Missouri put forward no evidence that any defendant broke any contract to ship PPE to the United States during the relevant period,” the filing told the court. The Emergency Ministry, entering only to attack jurisdiction, asks whether a $24.5 billion default can stand when it was entered against sovereigns who had not appeared, on claims the brief says were never pleaded in the form that was served. Missouri will answer that the defendants were served, that they chose silence, and that the commercial exception exists so a state can sue when a foreign instrumentality enters a market and distorts it. Both stories now have a due date. October 19 for the state. December 3 for the reply.

Both sides also have a political audience the court is not required to please. Missouri voters were promised a historic collection. Beijing cannot accept a U.S. district judge pricing the early pandemic. Limbaugh answers to the immunity statute and to whether he abused his discretion when he treated empty-chair damages as proved. The Eighth Circuit has already saved the narrow claim once. It has not blessed a tax-revenue model that runs to 2051, tripled, as if it were a check. The AEGIS Alliance has watched other headline numbers collide with collection reality, including Citigroup’s $81 trillion near-miss. A wire that large can be unwound in a day. A sovereign default cannot. Hanaway can mail packets. She cannot print a lien on the People’s Bank of China.

A Judgment Is Not a Check, and the Briefing Proves It

Collection remains the unglamorous half even if the state beats both motions. Farmland titled to a private Chinese investor is not farmland titled to the People’s Government of Hubei Province. Banks, aircraft lessors, and port operators will lawyer every levy. The ministry’s appearance is a warning about that problem, not a payment. Three defendants are now paying American counsel to argue the court was powerless. The other names on the caption, including the central government and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, have not all made the same choice. A partial appearance can still crack a joint-and-several judgment if the judge decides the whole award was void.

Until a marshal tags an asset, the accurate sentence is the boring one. A federal judge in Missouri entered a default in March 2025. A Chinese province retained a global firm in August 2026. An emergency ministry followed in September. The state has until October 19 to defend the number, and the defendants have until December 3 to answer that defense. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, not a press conference about farmland, will decide whether $24,488,825,457 is a verdict or a monument. More of the file sits in politics, international news, and U.S. news at The AEGIS Alliance. The chairs are no longer empty. The money has not moved.