When Chinese doctors started sharing information about a new SARS-like coronavirus last December, Chinese Communist Party reprimanded them, called them in for questioning, and ordered labs to stop testing samples and to destroy existing samples. Wuhan was not put on lockdown until January 23, almost a month after officials learned of the new virus. As the disease spread around the world, China delayed any policy response for three weeks. Had authorities acted sooner, they could have reduced the spread by up to 95 percent, according to a recent study.
China's denial and delay enabled the spread of a deadly virus that has crippled the world, infected over 1 million people, and claimed at least 50,000 lives. Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated, has reported no new cases — reportedly because it stopped testing altogether, likely in an effort to keep the official numbers down. The Chinese Communist Party has blamed the U.S. for the virus, pushing the propaganda narrative that even mentioning the coronavirus's origins in China is racist. China's response to the coronavirus makes the Soviet Union's response to Chernobyl look good by comparison.
Yet western media and academics seem all too keen on taking China's word for it. On Tuesday, a professor at the London School of Economics went so far as to call the coronavirus the "opportunity of the century" for the Middle Kingdom to cement its place as a global power and win the world over to its way of life.
"I think this is the opportunity of the century for China to build trust in the world, which it has found so difficult to come by as a rising nation, and to rebuild its international image —
