The Chinese Communist Party’s effort to blame its titanic coronavirus disaster on its own people, because they foolishly challenged the wisdom of dictator Xi Jinping’s endless lockdowns, apparently is not going well.

On Monday, the state-run Global Times took a stab at blaming “imported cases” for the tidal wave of Chinese coronavirus sickness and death sweeping across China.

The thrust of the Global Times piece was that Shanghai doctors managed to detect and contain “Omicron sub-variants BQ.1 and XBB that have been prevailing in some overseas countries.”

The “imported cases” of these mutant strains were “placed under closed-loop management” [quarantine and lockdown] and have not caused any “large-scale local transmission,” according to the Global Times, which strongly implied that other imported variants have been running amok in China.

Some of the imported strains supposedly came from the United States:

Among the 25 samples of XBB variants detected in Shanghai, three were identified as XBB.1.5 subvariants, which has become dominant in the US, accounting for about 41 percent of confirmed COVID cases across the country, according to the data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on December 30, 2022. 

According to the Chinese researchers, the samples were collected from imported cases that have not caused local transmission. 

They also noted that the mutant strains imported from abroad are more complex and most of them are detected for the first time in China.

The article repeated there was no “local transmission” of these imported strains a half-dozen times. The reason for this insistence became apparent halfway through when the Global Times revealed Chinese social media is buzzing with theories that an extremely contagious variant of the omicron strain is coming from America to give unsuspecting Chinese victims diarrhea:

A screenshot introducing XBB.1.5 variant became a trending topic on the Chinese social media on December 31, 2022. The screenshot said the variant that has prevalence in the US mainly attacks heart, blood vessels and stomach and suggested preparing Montmorillonite powder for diarrhea caused by XBB.1.5.

The screenshot led to sold-out of the medicine at many pharmacies in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen on January 1, 2023. 

The article concluded by assuring readers that natural or “herd” immunity “plays a weak role in preventing the infection of new mutant strains.” This was probably meant to deflect resentment in China that Xi’s lockdowns left the public with far less natural immunity than people living in the long-ago-reopened Western world.

Dwelling on “imported cases” also helps the Chinese Communist Party repair its wounded pride after a growing list of countries announced special restrictions on Chinese travelers, or in the case of Morocco, banned them outright.

The current infection wave is by far the biggest of the pandemic for China, but it experienced a number of sizable outbreaks throughout 2021 and 2022, often resulting in grueling city-wide lockdowns. Shanghai suffered through one of the worst of these lockdowns last summer.

Chinese officials almost always blamed these outbreaks on “imported” infections, brought into China by foreign travelers or products.

The Global Times article about Shanghai detecting omicron variants in foreign travelers inadvertently highlighted the hypocrisy of China complaining about unfair and “political” restrictions imposed on its travelers by other countries, when China itself thinks nothing of closing its borders, requiring coronavirus tests from incoming travelers, and putting foreigners into quarantine.

“China’s borders have been largely closed since March 2020 – meaning few foreigners were able to enter and those that did had to undergo rigorous testing and quarantine,” the BBC noted on Tuesday.