zlacker

If the CCP have nothing to hide then why do they do everything they possibly can to hide things from the rest of the world?

>>f430+(OP)
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".

>>f430+(OP)
The domestic narrative in China is that the virus is of foreign origin, with the CCP press strongly suggesting that it's of US origin - eg:[1].

The truth probably is that they know it originated (from animals) in China, and don't want the WHO to officially reach that conclusion. That's not particularly damaging to most countries, but in a communist country with tightly controlled information flow, the citizenry isn't shown a government making mistakes.

1: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1183658.shtml

>>f430+(OP)
Surveillance and covert activity launched from the US and Western Europe is not done openly. If a US government agency discovered a US origin for covid-19 tomorrow, do you seriously think you'd hear about it, or that it would ever be reported in a mainstream media outlet? If it escaped from a US lab, they knew it at the time, and had no way of stopping domestic spread, do you think that US agencies would be above covertly also releasing it in Wuhan as cover, and getting Chinese assets to report about suspicious deaths on social media? China is secretive about important things, and the West is secretive about important things.

To be clear, these scenarios are entirely and spontaneously made up, but they're also entirely possible, and we've fallen into the trap of believing any old bullshit about China simply because it's possible, and reconciling our spreading it and our obvious ignorance with racist "inscrutable Chinese" tropes.

The reason we don't know more about China is not because they're quiet, the reason we don't know about China is because we ban and censor media coming from China (just as they do to us, but moreso.) Somehow it's become mainstream to believe that the public shouldn't know what the Chinese government thinks (or the Russian government, or the Iranian government) and that it's better to rely on rumor and retired generals.