When the first cases started turning up in the city of Wuhan in mid-December, two weeks before the official disclosure on December 31 that there was a new virus, sick people were turned away from local hospitals and sent home to infect other people and die. The hospitals were told to report "zero infections". Why? Because an important meeting of provincial and city officials was under way in Wuhan and only good news was permitted. The cover-ups and delays were "reprehensible" according to an eminent Australian virologist, John Mackenzie. Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit:AP Famously, eight doctors in Wuhan who tried to raise the alarm before the official announcement were detained by police and ordered to shut up. One, Li Wenliang, caught the virus and died from it, at the age of 34. Dr Li is now considered a martyr in China. Li's last public statement was an appeal for free speech. It has since been censored. And while Beijing initially was praised for swiftly circulating abroad the vital clinical details of the virus, subsequent revelations show the opposite is true. "The genome sequence – crucial for rapid development of diagnostics needed in an outbreak response – was not released until January 12, 17 days after the preliminary sequence data were obtained," four scientists have concluded in an article in the medical journal The Lancet. The scientists include members of the emergency committee of the World Health Organisation.

Loading Official reporting of the number of people infected has gyrated bizarrely and inexplicably. The delays and cover-ups have made China's people distrustful and fearful. As hundreds of millions lock themselves at home out of fear, the economic cost of the virus mounts. China's President, Xi Jinping, has responded by squarely blaming local officials in Wuhan for the delays and cover-ups. But the Wuhan authorities, returning the favour, said in an interview on January 27 with the state-owned China Central Television that they were not able to report the virus until authorised by Beijing. A furious Xi is disciplining local officials. About 400 so far have been punished. Last week, Xi sacked the topmost Communist Party official for the province in which Wuhan is located, Hubei. And Xi's regime has mobilised massively to manage popular opinion. A top-level edict went out in early February instructing Chinese media managers that it was time for "telling the moving stories of how those on the frontline are preventing and fighting the virus" and "showcasing the unity of the Chinese people in the face of the virus".

The central propaganda authority said it would dispatch 300 propaganda agents – though it called them "journalists" – to the "frontline" in Hubei to make sure the required happy news stories were supplied. President Xi has been lauded in headlines like this from one state-owned outlet: "Following the Example of General Secretary Xi Jinping, For a Loyal and Heroic Struggle for Early Victory." Catchy, huh? Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video A noted veteran political commentator, Willy Wo-Lap Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, tells me: "The official state media have glorified Xi as the brilliant and effective man to deal with the outbreak. In actual fact, this is the toughest test of his power since he took over nine years ago. He's accused of not divulging the truth about the virus and the number of casualties, of being too slow to mobilise medical supplies to the affected area, and for the people in the huge province of Hubei being left to their own devices under quarantine, without adequate resources from the central government." Loading

Lam says that while the media is dripping with "feelgood and upbeat stories about how we are winning the war against the virus", it's not convincing many people. "People do not believe the official version because of the long-standing tradition of the Chinese Communist Party to hide the facts and glorify the supposed achievements of the top leaders. For example they did the same thing in the SARS epidemic. People now see this as playing the SARS trajectory." In that case, the Chinese authorities covered up the reality of the disease for three years. So, in a sure sign that Xi feels the need to better deflect blame, a party magazine broke big news on the weekend. It disclosed that Xi had taken personal control of the outbreak response on January 7. This was 13 days earlier than had been known. The Qiushi magazine reported a speech, secret till now, by Xi to his top officials ordering the quarantining of Wuhan, among other things. Why is this significant? To protect him from the criticism that he was too slow to react. But while it was "a story intended to be in Xi's self-defence", says Lam, "the fact that he mentioned the virus in a closed meeting two weeks before the national mobilisation doesn't help much – you have to tell the public." Xi is fighting for his reputation in this titanic episode of "discourse management", although his grip on power is not in doubt. A cyclist walks through disinfectant spray in northern China. Credit:AP

But even as Beijing is struggling with the consequences of so much bungling, so much death, so much damage worldwide, its officials still manage to turn this shocking culpability into an asset in managing the discourse with the wider world. Loading After the Morrison government decided to protect Australia from the virus by imposing a ban on people travelling from or through China, the Chinese embassy had the gall to complain – wrongly – that the Chinese government hadn't been given advance notice. And to accuse Canberra of an overreaction. China has imposed draconian bans on its own people, in areas home to some 50 million. Yet Beijing's mouthpiece People's Daily accused other countries that have imposed travel bans of "racism". This list would include not only Australia and the US but also Singapore and Japan and Vietnam. Loading