When the Government says that there needs to be a “reckoning” with China once the coronavirus emergency is over, its focus must be much broader than simply examining Beijing’s culpability in creating the pandemic.

The deliberate lack of transparency and cooperation that has characterised the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) response to the outbreak since the virus was first identified in Wuhan constitutes nothing less than a fundamental breach of trust between China and the rest of the world.

Despite Beijing’s attempts to cover up the true scale of the outbreak in China, British scientists are now warning Downing Street that the CCP has probably downplayed the number of cases by a factor of 15 to 40.

To make matters worse, Beijing has compounded its reprehensible behaviour by launching a disinformation campaign that seeks to portray China as the victim, rather than being the instigator of a global health crisis that has so far claimed almost 40,000 lives worldwide, and caused the greatest slump in global economic activity since the Second World War.

China’s attempts to blame the initial outbreak on an American military delegation that visited Wuhan last October have received short shrift in Washington, while British ministers have privately expressed their disgust at Beijing’s attempts to exploit the pandemic for economic gain with what they call “predatory” offers of help for affected countries.