China's success cannot be questioned to hide US failures

Ever since the novel coronavirus epidemic was first reported in Wuhan, the Western media have been running a malicious campaign against China. Although such smear campaigns against China are not new, this time many Western media outlets have stooped to even lower levels to defame China.

Many Western media outlets first tried to establish that the outbreak was a Chinese crisis, and blamed it on the food habits of the Chinese people. For instance, a story in the German magazine Der Spiegel suggested the virus was "made" in China, while financial blog ZeroHedge and Fox news suggested, without citing any evidence, that a scientist at Wuhan Institute of Virology had "developed" the novel coronavirus strain responsible for the outbreak. But a study published in Nature Medicine journal has said the virus originated in nature, not developed in a lab.

In the early stage of the outbreak, many Western media outlets published stories censuring the Chinese government for violating human rights by implementing "draconian" and "authoritarian" measures in Wuhan to contain the epidemic. Some reports even took a swipe at China for overdoing things in a bid to prevent and control the spread of the virus.

Despite all the distractions and Western criticisms, China remained focused on the fight against the virus, and has now largely contained the outbreak. By contrast, many Western politicians, in their desperation to target China for everything it did, ignored the threat the virus posed to their countries.

Yet when the numbers of cases and deaths in Western countries started rising rapidly, with the United States accounting for the largest numbers of both (more than 899,000 cases and over 46,200 deaths by Monday), many Western media outlets intensified their attack against China, this time blaming it for not doing enough to contain the outbreak.

On April 2, Bloomberg published a report, "U.S. Intelligence Says China Concealed Extent of Virus Outbreak", saying: "China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths, the US intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three US officials." The report also said: "The outbreak began in China's Hubei province in late December 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths (China updated the figure the week before last), according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares with 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the US, which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world."

Many other media outlets have also published similar reports. BBC published a report, "Coronavirus: Why China's claims of success raise eyebrows" on April 21, and Time magazine carried a story titled "China Says It's Beating Coronavirus. But Can We Believe Its Numbers?". All the reports are based on a classified US intelligence report, and that too according to an anonymous source. But according to normal journalistic practice, media outlets publish reports citing anonymous sources only when the facts are linked to very sensitive issues, and the numbers of infections and fatalities are not that sensitive.

Also, there is enough reason to doubt the authenticity of the reports, because US intelligence officials have a long history of deceiving or misleading media outlets by providing them with false and fabricated information to achieve their hidden political goals. The report saying former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction" is once example of such a deception－for which the people of Iraq, for no fault of theirs, are still paying a heavy and tragic price.

Second, the comparison of the numbers of infections and fatalities in China and the US suggests the main concern of the reports is how can China outdo the US in the fight against the virus. Maybe that's why the reports have questioned the achievements of China. But the fact is, China has indeed done a much better job of fighting the virus than the US.

Perhaps the media outlets are questioning China's achievements to cover up the failures of the US in the fight against the pandemic.

The author is the China Correspondent of the Bangladesh Post. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.