'In combating and preventing the spread of Sars, China's health departments have always kept in close contact with the World Health Organisation,' the editorial said. 'It can be seen that there has been a misunderstanding abroad that China has not co-operated with [the] WHO's investigation and is concealing the facts.'

The editorial, headlined 'Anti-China clique uses virus as battering ram,' concluded: 'Facts have spoken for themselves. In tackling Sars, the Chinese government has shown the highest degree of responsibility and co-operation with the international community.'

The attack on those who have criticised China for mishandling the Sars crisis was not confined to the China Daily. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman also condemned such criticism as irresponsible, asserting that China had handled the issue with a responsible and scientific attitude all along and had not covered up anything.

Unfortunately for China, the international community clearly does not agree. The WHO itself says China was slow to co-operate. Its director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, in an interview with Japan's Asahi daily - published the same day as the China Daily editorial - had this to say: 'It would have been better if the Chinese government had been more open in the early stages, from November until March. We were asking questions, wanting to send in experts to help identify the source. It took too long before they felt they needed to be helpful.'

Dr Brundtland, presumably, cannot be misinformed about the extent of China's co-operation with the WHO. Does the China Daily then consider her part of an 'anti-China clique' using the virus as a battering ram against China?

Fortuitously, another news item in Wednesday's paper disclosed that a distinguished Chinese physician, Dr Jiang Yanyong, former chief of surgery for the No301 military hospital in Beijing, has written a signed statement that there were more than 60 patients in one Beijing hospital alone, seven of whom had died.

That statement stands in stark contrast to the assertion by Health Minister Zhang Wenkang that there had only been 19 cases in Beijing, with four deaths.

Dr Jiang was quoted by Time magazine as saying that he decided to make a public statement because he feared a 'failure to disclose accurate statistics about the illness will only lead to more deaths'.

Was Dr Jiang misinformed, one wonders, or does he too belong to the 'anti-China clique'?

There may be a rational explanation for the difference in numbers. Perhaps the health minister's figures include only patients in civilian hospitals and not those in the country's chain of military hospitals. If so, the authorities should make this clear and also disclose how many patients and deaths there have been in the military hospitals.

There may, indeed, be occasions when groundless malicious attacks are made by members of an anti-China cabal. But the Sars crisis is clearly not one of them. No doubt, the Chinese government did not want to jeopardise the flow of tourists and foreign investment into the country. And no doubt it did not wish to create panic in the country.

The Chinese government's actions, or lack of action, can easily be understood. But this does not mean they were right. Certainly, as a responsible member of the international community, it should have informed the WHO much earlier. And it should not have kept WHO experts waiting in Beijing for more than a week before allowing them into Guangdong, where the disease originated.

All indications suggest China's new political leadership is now aware of the problem and has given it top priority. But China's propagandists do the country's leaders and its hard-working health-care workers no favours by instinctively hitting out at those who point to failings on the part of the government. People learn from their mistakes, but only when they admit that there were mistakes. Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator