Who is most at fault for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic? Unsurprisingly, much depends on your personal agenda. In the UK, plenty of ire has been levelled against the government for its approach, while in the US, a hostile media corps has taken every opportunity to lay into an (admittedly haphazard) President Trump, with something approaching relish.

Elsewhere, there have been increasingly outlandish claims, from a Chinese spokesman who suggested the US might have imported the virus to Wuhan, to the Iranian government, who naturally claimed the pandemic was caused by Israel.

But while most countries have prioritised stopping the outbreak, China, the source of it, has been manoeuvring at speed to try and deflect the narrative away from taking its fair share of the blame. Sadly, it seems to be working, and in the Western press Beijing has found partners only too willing to aid it.

It began from the outset. We all remember the footage, carefully edited, of the field hospital in Wuhan that was constructed in a matter of days. Western journalists and commentators lapped it up as a good thing, praising the speed of the build, and the care it showed China was taking — ignoring the fact that its sheer scale, rather than something to be marvelled at, foretold a grim reality about the situation on the ground that the authorities were less keen on sharing.

One journalist at the Liverpool Echo even used it as an opportunity to chastise the UK government, asking why the Chinese government could build a hospital in days, but the rebuilt Royal Hospital in the city centre remained unfinished. Never mind that tens of thousands were dying, and that the CCP doesn’t have to worry about trifling things like planning permission, health and safety, or workers rights. Really, this was a sign that the Tories are as negligent as they are wicked.

Then came the suggestions that using the phrases ‘Chinese Virus’ or ‘Wuhan Flu’ to refer to Covid-19 was racist. That, naturally, was something the US media in particular were very keen on promoting, as it was yet another chance for them to show the world that Trump, instigator of the trade war with Beijing and prominent user of ‘Chinese Virus’ was the worst racist on the planet.

It hasn’t just been the Anglosphere. In Italy, the country worst affected beyond China and Iran (whatever either tells you), the rise to prominence of the right wing Lega party from a regional separatist group to a national party had its origins in Italian discontent at the economic ‘colonisation’ of Chinese firms and workers on the peninsula. But, perhaps because of its popularity as a right wing cause, the response to that, especially in some sections of the Italian media, has been a thawing of feeling towards Beijing, bordering on enthusiasm.

At the height of the crisis in Wuhan, Italy donated significant amounts of PPE to China. The Chinese are now returning the favour, though they are allegedly sending back the same kit Italy donated to Beijing in the first place — and rather than giving it back for free as it was sent, they are selling it.

Yet, despite this, media coverage of China’s ‘help’ has been nothing if not fawning. Moreover, it has been vast in scale. The state broadcaster, Rai, has given Chinese assistance three times as much airtime as it afforded the medical assistance given by the United States or Russia, whilst one would assume no help had been forthcoming from the EU at all if one were to compare.

Yesterday, it was announced that Wuhan was finally to emerge from the state of quarantine it has endured for months. Yet the response in the West has not been to ask whether or not it is really safe to do so, but instead to repeat the line from China — that the city and its authorities, the ones responsible for the initial cover up, for shutting down testing for the virus, and for hounding doctors who tried to warn the world, are ‘heroes’.

There have been few probing questions — such as why footage keeps emerging of bodies being moved in the dead of night to avoid detection, of whether or not a city with a habit of doctoring the truth can be trusted after all the lies that went before. No one is asking when foreign journalists expelled from the country will be allowed back into China to report what is actually happening. No, we seem far more interested in apportioning blame at home.

Of course, questions must be asked of our own government and others as to their conduct and courses of action. Scrutiny is essential to ensure the truth is known. But there is space for us to criticise the likes of the UK and US, and still hold China responsible for its crimes. Wuhan’s authorities were anything but heroic throughout this period. And though they may have made dreadful errors, Trump and other Western leaders do not compare to the duplicity of the CCP.

China will try to rewrite the history of the pandemic anyway — the Western media, our first line of defense against misinformation, have no business assisting it by turning a blind eye.