China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign

This article tries to argue that China created needless alarm over coronavirus. That's an interesting reversal of the previous line of attack against China over the coronavirus.

What actually happened was much simpler. China was caught just as much by surprise as everyone else was by this novel virus. The government dallied for about two weeks, while the local government tried to carry on business as usual (just as has happened in many places around the world). But around 20 January, there was enough alarm raised by Chinese virologists (notably Zhong Nanshan) that the central government began taking serious action, including very strict lockdowns in much of the country (the strictest being in Hubei province, of course). Those lockdowns worked to bring the epidemic back under control, but not before several thousand people died in Wuhan. Most other countries have not been able to emulate this response, and have back and forth between locking down (often not fully enough) and opening up (often too early). But there are people, such as the author of this article, who want to lay the blame for other countries' failures at China's feet.