A city government implicated in attempts to cover up China’s widening scandal over contaminated milk has admitted “lacking political sensitivity” in its handling of the case, but it also sought to shift blame to a local dairy producer it says requested controls on media coverage.

The Communist party’s People’s Daily newspaper on Wednesday quoted the deputy party secretary of northern Shijiazhuang city as saying Sanlu Group, the milk producer, had asked in a letter in early August for “strengthened management” of news media. It had done so in order to prevent reports “creating negative influences on society by stirring up this issue”.