China is engaged in a wide-scale propaganda effort to convince the world that it is not responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying itself with carefully distributed disinformation as being the most proactive, intelligent, and responsible of the world superpowers.

And many in America's free press are happy to help China gaslight the entire world.

“China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It,” reads the headline to an opinion article published Friday by the New York Times.

Earlier, on Thursday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow hosted reporter Donald McNeil, who explained that China has had “enormous success in beating down its epidemic” because of its advancements in healthcare technology, testing, and mandatory quarantines.

Maddow thanked McNeil at the end of the segment for explaining so convincingly the “distance between” what China has done to fight COVID-19 and “what we’re preparing for.” Later, on social media, the Maddow show shared a clip of the segment with the headline “How coronavirus testing works in a country that takes the problem seriously.”

Elsewhere this week, the Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum asked on social media, “China has reacted to the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy by sending aid. The U.S. has reacted by suspending flights. Who is the superpower?”

Let’s get the facts straight.

COVID-19 has spread to more than 120 countries, claiming more than 5,000 lives, precisely because of the Chinese government’s arrogance and incompetence.

Chinese authorities knew about the virus in December of last year when it first appeared in the city of Wuhan. Instead of taking cautious measures and sharing what they knew about the disease with the rest of the world, China’s government engaged in a massive cover-up, hoping that maybe it would all just go away.

The Chinese government suppressed the sharing of relevant information, arresting and punishing medical professionals who tried to warn people that there was something going around with SARS-like symptoms.

Chinese President Xi Jinping later had the gall to criticize the U.S. government after it imposed a temporary (and apparently prescient) travel ban on Chinese visitors. Xi seems to think that China can fool the world, and, based on the way Western journalists are reacting, he might be right.

“This isn’t blanket praise for an authoritarian party-state,” Guardian columnist Bhaskar Sunkara said Thursday, “but thank God this pandemic started in a country with a strong state that took serious public health measures. Imagine if China was run by the GOP instead of the CCP.”

Sorry, but that is exactly blanket praise for an authoritarian party-state. It's also a complete denial of reality. If this virus had emerged in the United States, it would have been reported on and taken seriously. Too bad it emerged in a country run by a secretive, authoritarian dictatorship.

“How uncomfortable is it,” asked MSNBC’s Chuck Todd this weekend, “that perhaps China’s authoritarian ways did prevent this? Meaning, had China been a free and open society, this might have spread faster?”

No, Chuck. China did not “prevent” anything. Ask the Italians.

Finally, the viral clip of McNeil’s appearance this week on MSNBC, the one that supposedly shows China actually takes the virus “seriously," includes no mentions whatsoever of the Chinese government’s effort to suppress information or punish whistleblowers.

The truth is that China did absolutely everything wrong. One can only wonder what is motivating the Western journalists who pretend the contrary is true.