BEIJING—Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yang Jiechi, Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser and Antony Blinken, Secretary of State held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in a number of contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China. Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have escaped from a virus laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered. Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped …