As China in March became the first major country to recover from the coronavirus outbreak that spread from the central city of Wuhan, its officials kicked off another campaign: to heal its tattered international image.
President Xi Jinping held a flurry of phone calls with world leaders to promise aid. More than 170 Chinese medical experts were dispatched to Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa. State media outlets flooded the Internet with photos of Chinese masks arriving in 100 countries and stories questioning the pandemic’s origins. Ambassadors inundated international newspapers with op-eds hailing the sacrifices Beijing made to buy time for other countries, without acknowledging how the outbreak erupted in the first place.
