>>f430+f8
Politics. China is keen to not have the blame for COVID pinned on them. Accepting the blame makes Xi look weak and inept. It also opens up the door for countries to demand reparations. Meanwhile, every other country (especially the US) is eager to manufacture a narrative in which China eats the full blame for this because it absolves their politicians of responsibility for their complete mismanagement of the crisis. It sounds a lot better to say "we had a bioweapon unleashed against us and there was nothing we could do" than to say "this is just like the last 10 times we had a pandemic and we still botched our responses".