No official backing?

Look a bit better, it's not difficult.
baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%BE%90…

He enjoys a special State Council allowance (usually reserved for academicians) and was an outstanding party member of the General Staff (PLA command headquarters).

And his book was published by nothing else than the official Military Medical Press.

He is very well perceived at the highest levels:

But that is not the end of it.

He was back at it with longdom.org/open-access/un… 'Unique Epidemiological Patterns and Origin of the Outbreak of Human Infection with H7N9 AIV in China from 2013 to 2015', where he hinted at an unatural introduction of H7N9 avian flu in China:

All dressed-up in party mumbo-jumbo about the "Chinese Theory of Infectious Disease Epidemiology”:

Such a nice professor who has supervised 100+ students at the 4th Military University where his theories seem to be very popular.

But yes, this is not new.
I and my co-author (@RdeMaistre) actually mentioned his book as a perfect example of Chinese conspiracy theories in a probabilistic paper on SARS-CoV-2 back in August 20:

Reference #6 of:
researchgate.net/publication/345753939_Outlines_of_a_probabilistic_evaluation_of_possible_SARS-CoV-2_origins