China's Government is urging the US not to suspend up to $US500 million [$793 million] of annual funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which President Donald Trump says is due to the global health body "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus".

Asked if China — a much smaller donor — would consider making up the shortfall, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian gave little away.

"China will look into relevant issues according to the needs of the situation," he said.

But Mr Trump's action and strong criticism is likely to position Beijing even more firmly behind the global health body, whose officials in the early weeks took Chinese Government assurances about low transmission risk at face value, poured lavish praise on leader Xi Jinping and publicly backed Beijing's uncompromising line on not dealing with the Government of Taiwan.

Last week, China's state news agency Xinhua released a timeline of the Government's response that intended to show the "strong leadership" of "Comrade" Xi Jinping, with a day-by-day breakdown of the response and dealings with the WHO.

But the widely promoted timeline omitted the mistakes that helped exacerbate the outbreak and caused so much anger overseas.

These are some of the notable omissions

China's Government has continually referred to the WHO's continuing praise for its measures as a counter narrative to US criticism. ( Supplied: State Media )

Take, for example, January 7:

"Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, made instructions on epidemic response when presiding over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee."

Despite a crisis serious enough to warrant the national leader's attention, what's missing is that Mr Xi didn't reveal anything about this publicly at the time, despite state media reporting on other items from his meeting that day.

With the nation left in the dark that the unknown pneumonia was serious enough to warrant the top leadership's attention, it's little wonder people in Wuhan kept going about their business normally.

Then this on January 15:

"The National Health Commission unveiled the first version of guidelines on diagnosis and treatment for pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus, along with the guidelines on prevention and control measures."

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But no mention of China's CDC Chief Li Qun declaring on state television that day: "We have reached the latest understanding that the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low."

His reassuring comments came despite the National Health Commission a day earlier advising local health departments across the whole country to prepare for an epidemic.

With no WHO representatives in Wuhan until January 20, the global health body took the assurances from China's CDC at face value, and communicated them to the world.

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Then there was also this on January 18:

"The National Health Commission [NHC] organised and sent a high-level expert team, headed by Zhong Nanshan, to Wuhan to carry out on-site investigation into the prevention and control work [until January 19]." "The NHC released the second version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment for the pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus."

Yet for a document titled Timeline of China releasing information, there's no mention that state media broadcast the director of Wuhan's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Li Gang that day saying "our preliminary findings is that this new coronavirus is not very contagious".

"We can't rule out the possibility of limited person-to-person transmission, but the ongoing risk of it spreading between people is relatively small," he said.

"This epidemic is both preventable and controllable."

By this stage, multiple doctors, including the leader of a visiting expert team, had already fallen ill with the virus.

Within two days, China's most prominent epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan was the one to break the news that 14 medical workers had been infected from a patient at Wuhan's Union Hospital, and that yes, human-to-human transmission was definitely happening.

China cites WHO's praise as a counter narrative to criticism

In late January, as the United States, Australia and other nations started scrambling for evacuation flights from Wuhan, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus went to Beijing.

According to a Chinese government account of the meeting, Dr Tedros told China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi:

"We have noticed that some countries would like to evacuate citizens.

"The WHO does not advocate this. In the current situation, we should remain calm and there is no need to overreact."

Last week China's state news agency Xinhua released a timeline of the Government's response to COVID-19. ( AP: Ju Peng via Xinhua )

On the same day, he met Mr Xi and lavished him with extraordinary praise for both his personal leadership and the Government's role — at least, according to Chinese state media.

"The measures taken by China are not only protecting the Chinese people, but also protecting the people of the world," Dr Tedros is quoted as saying.

"We sincerely thank you for this. The speed and scale of China 's actions are rare in the world.

"This is the advantage of the Chinese system, and the relevant experience is worth learning for other countries.

"I believe that the measures taken by China will effectively control and eventually overcome the epidemic."

Later, when asked if he'd been pressured, Dr Tedros told a briefing: "China doesn't need to ask to be praised."

He also gave tacit backing to Beijing's opposition to the border entry bans, which countries as diverse as Australia, the US, North Korea and Singapore had, by then, applied to travellers from China.

There was no need for measures that "unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade", he was quoted as saying in early February.

Having criticised the US and Australia over the restrictions, China ended up applying its own border entry bans for foreigners as the pandemic devastated Europe and the US in March.

Among the many details listed in the long timeline published by Xinhua is Mr Xi telling his Cuban counterpart on February 28: "The WHO and the international community have spoken highly of China's prevention and control work."

The WHO's constant endorsements have been vital to China's efforts to shape a narrative that overlooks the early blunders and highlights the expansive and successful containment measures Beijing later introduced.

Donald Trump's efforts to blame both for the US's tragically inadequate preparation for the virus was inevitable — China and the WHO's legacy on COVID-19 are already deeply intertwined.