File photo: AFP

After the New York Times published an article by Dr Rao Yi, a US-trained molecular neurobiologist in China, who compared the fate of his relatives in the US to those in China during the COVID-19 pandemic, both the article and the newspaper came under attack. 

Rao wrote that his family members in Wuhan stayed safe, while his uncle in New York died of COVID-19 when the coronavirus swept across the US. "The world's strongest country militarily, the richest economically and the most advanced medically," allowed this to happen, Rao wrote.

The article told the indisputable truth about the US government's inaction and lack of responsibility during a time when the health and lives of its people are under threat. The NYT's conscience and sense of duty surely led it to publish the article.

But this undeniable truth was instantly labelled "explicit Chinese propaganda" by US politicians like anti-China Republican senator Tom Cotton, who even had the temerity to call for the firing of the editor of the New York Times.

Panic-stricken US politicians are fearful their people might learn the reality behind their suffering - that their president and government did nothing to prevent the epidemic from growing exponentially, but instead, tried to silence scientific and rational voices that warned against the deadly virus, and then impetuously gambled that opening the economy would give them leverage in November's election. To cover these truths, they keep swinging at their favourite punching bag - China.

When politicians like Cotton rage against even a grain of positive truth about China and call it "Chinese propaganda," they show just how delusional they really are. 

In April, an article published by CNN praised the Chinese military's response to the coronavirus while noting that multiple US Navy aircraft carriers have reported cases of coronavirus. This article also met with intense backlash from US politicians, this time from Senator Josh Hawley who called the piece "China Communist Party propaganda."

Also in April, the White House launched a tirade against government-funded Voice of America for "amplifying Chinese propaganda," after the US media outlet called the lockdown measures in Wuhan a "successful model". 

It is widely known US media outlets have all reported harshly on China, and would never publish "Chinese propaganda." Yet some US politicians run around with the hair on fire when a rare fact-based article reveals a positive outcome in China. It shows their reluctance to face up to reality. 

The more they try to suppress the truth about China, the greater their anxiety and trepidation. Their rigid misapprehension of China is like a never-to-be-opened rusted lock. They don't actually care about "China propaganda" or the health and lives of their people but their own political future. Pitifully, it is the American people who are paying for the excuses the US politicians found for their gigantic failure.