Assorted Western media commentators first predicted, as the COVID-19 pandemic began, that China faced a “Chernobyl moment”. Alas, it did not. If anywhere experienced an outcome that might be so labeled, it was, initially, the US and Europe. Awkward. Frustrating.

Never mind. During 2020, the narrative switched. COVID-19 may have been contained in China so far — but it was set to escape these controls, sooner rather than later, and spread alarmingly, we were told. More frustration. Another dud Western prediction bites the dust. Something of a double-dud, in 2020. The Yangtze floodwaters — rather too enthusiastically argued to be set to breach the Three Gorges Dam — failed to deliver, too.

Never mind — once again. We moved into 2021 — along comes delta and, still more startling, omicron. Surely China will lose control of these COVID-19 variants. So far, more disappointment: another failure by China to fall into line with Western expectations of Beijing encountering a significant catastrophe on a measurable scale. What is it with China? Why don’t they start getting some COVID-19 things spectacularly wrong, like us? Not fair.

Media folks are working round the clock ably assisted by Western government and NGO input. We must, they appear to have agreed over a long cup of tea, pour rain on this Olympic parade from all angles

Note that concern about the terrible, adverse consequences for millions of Chinese citizens rarely if ever figures in these media-led, Sino-calamity speculations, and if it does, it is transitory.

Worse still for these grim-faced China-watchers, now we have the Winter Olympics happening. True, there is the possibility that COVID-19-related or other problems may arise, but here is a very well-prepared and well-organized spectacle now being watched by the world. This is a signal for the mainstream Western media to redouble its Sinophobic effort. Media folks are working round the clock ably assisted by Western government and NGO input. We must, they appear to have agreed over a long cup of tea, pour rain on this Olympic parade from all angles.

Well-tilted stories have already appeared. A COVID-19-infected athlete is moved from one isolation facility to another. She is Western, as it happens, and The Guardian tells us she has been “freed” rather than relocated. The Economist, meanwhile wonders how “joyless” these Winter Olympics could be. Interesting: despite the Novak Djokovic COVID-19 immigration fiasco at the Australian Open, no worldly, international correspondents saw joyless clouds gathering over Melbourne.

Unsurprisingly, no part of the Winter Olympics is being held in Hong Kong — but this has not meant that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was off the Western media radar as the Olympics commenced. The Times, in London, is back working on the project to badger British judges to walk away from their appointments as non-permanent judges on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. Very recently, that leading newspaper ran what it labeled as an exclusive, headlined, “British judges ready to enforce national security law in Hong Kong”. There is nothing new — nor exclusive — in the story. For its more-sinister, hectoring observations, it mainly relies on unnamed sources, plus Lord Falconer, an enduring supporter of the general HKSAR denigration project.

It is not a well-constructed article, but there is one breathtaking assertion early in the story that deserves examination. We are told that, “It was originally understood that all (Hong Kong) national security law cases would be heard by Chinese judges on the mainland.” Understood by whom is not explained — and cannot be explained. Any basic reading of the new National Security Law for Hong Kong shows that this extraordinary claim is simply false. In exceptional circumstances, Articles 55 and 56 of the NSL allow for some mainland involvement in national security cases in Hong Kong, but these articles do not remotely support the claim just quoted.

Did the writer source this understanding from outside of the actual law itself, in which case, why would anyone do that? If a first-year Bachelor of Law student made such a claim in an exam answer, they might be marked generously at 3 out of 10 and told not to comment on a given law until reading it carefully first.

The lead writer, in this case, was the legal editor of the Times. You might expect to find this sort of indolent, twisted belittling in some red-top tabloid called, let’s say, the “Jackel Daily”, but the Times is supposed to be a paper of record, where you can rely on basic factual statements, because they are based on prudent, pre-publication consideration.

We have, though, for reasons explained above, presently entered what might be termed a “more-than-usually silly season” for coverage of all matters related to China and its Hong Kong SAR. Containing China is a huge, incredibly difficult task. Stand by for an increased, deceptive measure of skewed, sometimes-witless, regularly slack commentary, as desperation levels intensify within the global Western media.

The author is a visiting professor in the Law Faculty of Hong Kong University.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.