I am Chinese and I was physically in China early 2020, I disagree strongly with with the narrative that China "was not forthcoming". What I saw there on the ground was totally different from Western reporting and narratives.

News about an "unknown decease" was right there on TV even as early as December 31[1]. On the same day, the news was already reported world-wide[2].

Later on, Western reporting said that China "lied about transmissibility" (i.e. that China said it was "not transmissible"), but what they actually said was that "evidence of transmissibility was not clear (at that moment)" — when knowledge of the virus was only a few weeks old and when Covid was nowhere near as transmissible as it is now.

Then later on, stories about "cover-ups" appeared, mostly referring to Li Wenliang, but these are complete misrepresentations.

- Li Wenliang was not a "whistleblower", his social media posts merely leaked through his contacts. And Li Wenliang's post was posted on Deccember 30, but literally the next day the case was already escalated to WHO[3].

- Li Wenliang also wasn't the first doctor who discovered something was wrong: dr Zhang Jixian was, who discovered the case many days before Li's actions. It was dr Zhang who worked on the process of escalating to China's national CDC and to the WHO.[4]

- Li Wenliang was never arrested, jailed or punished. The police merely reprimanded him. He had to sign an NDA promising not to spread rumors (the rumor being that "it was SARS", when it wasn't SARS and nobody knew what it was). That's it. He wasn't detained, he could go on working right after.

- Later on, the judge judged in favor of Li Wenliang, ruling that the police's behavior was unacceptable. The police then apologized.[5]

There were also stories about how China "infected the world" by deliberately allowing international flights from Wuhan — except China didn't do that, all flights from Wuhan were cancelled with the exception of diplomatic expatriation flights.

When I arrived back in the Netherlands by February 1, Wuhan had already been locked down for a week. And what did the western world do? They pretended like the virus would stay in China. Nobody took any measures to prepare for COVID. Nobody on the airport asked for my contact details. I called the Dutch CDC but there was no way to get tested, not even if I pay for it myself.

Meanwhile the media was full of stories about how "lockdowns are human rights violations", that "it's just a flu" and that "free press would have prevented this strategy". There were no "China was not forthcoming" stories back then — only stories gleeing about how big of a disaster China was. Only after it was apparent that it wasn't just a flu did the "China didn't warn us" stories began.

After it was apparently that the western "free press" failed to prevent the epidemic from spreading to their own territories (even with China's super-obvious warning of locking down Wuhan), did they take responsibility for the fact that they blamed it on China's "lack of free press" (even though China's press did report)? Of course not, they just swept that narrative under a carpet.

Then a year later, Delta appeared in India. Did anybody criticize India for not having stopped Delta despite already knowing about COVID for a year? Of course not: only if it happened in China does it deserve criticism. That China actually did report? Not important, we'll just keep pretending they didn't.

The problem isn't that "China wasn't forthcoming", the problem is that the west does not treat China fairly and has a tendency to scapegoat China. "China wasn't forthcoming" is merely an excuse to cover up the west's own failures and to stick to old prejudices about how China is a hellhole that can never do anything right.

I didn't use to care all that much about western reporting on China, but being on the ground in China during the early days of COVID opened my eyes and incensed me. It made me so angry to see all the lies in the media. It shocked me how ridiculously different reality was from western reporting.

What's more shocking to me was that I discovered that during the 25 years in the Netherlands, western media had effectively been lying to me about China the whole time. The false reporting about COVID was not a one-off fluke: I discovered that western media had always behaved that way (with other China-related topics), and will continue to behave that way. So if anyone wonders why I say things that sound like a "paid shill" (just to get ahead of the inevitable accusations just because I have a different opinion about China): this is why.

[1] http://tv.cctv.com/v/v1/VIDEZAj6WeYo0NLoxitYHgAd191231.html?...

[2] https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1YZ0GP

[3] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

[4] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-charges-a...

[5] https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/2044252365/politie-wuhan-doo...