It can also be a question of the connotation attached to a word in general usage versus what it means in a specific field. Other controversies or miscommunications have arisen because the way a word is used in a field has a very different connotation.
"New" is potentially less accurate than saying a virus is a mutation. There are multiple mutant forms for the virus, but those tracking it wouldn't label each one new, but they'd likely list each as being a mutation in their findings or in communications. The choice of mutant could be made for creating headlines, but media that is not familiar with the science (most) can also latch onto words that seem familiar and use them in the colloquial sense.
Similarly, using the word "theory" for public scientific discussion versus its usage in science is a stark difference. Public debate often uses the term "just a theory" to imply a concept is controversial or weakly substantiated given how most people use the term, whereas in science if discussing recognized theories they are discussing some of the most fundamentally tested and corroborated models known (theory of gravitation, theory of relatively, etc.).
The wording of the article is somewhat unclear. It states the tested samples weren't connected to cases of known direct travel from China. However, it goes on to state they appeared to be connected to Belgium. However, I'm not sure they were arguing that Belgium's outbreak wasn't connected to China. There's also some discussion family working at the international airport, in one of the articles.
There are multiple ways for this to happen without assuming simultaneous mutation of unrelated coronavirus genomes to produce nearly the same genome.
The typically recognized China cases likely represent a subset of virus mutations that became common in Wuhan province after infections ramped there. Given the indication that there was a possible case in November and a trickle of cases for about a month, it is possible that there was some circulation outside the surveillance of the hospitals, and perhaps one of the variations in that phase made it to Belgium, but was not the version that hit the densest population centers first in China.
There's also some discussion in the earlier article about the "mutant" virus that Belgium's samples in particular show a higher incidence of mixing, meaning patients had contracted multiple strains, which encourages transfer of traits. The more chaotic mix in Belgium may have spawned the subtype that made it into France, while the cases labelled as being from China were tied to a genetic line that may have been carried by direct travel, but the probability would have been proportional to the ramp in China of the subtype people recognize as being from there.
These are still early days, so interpretation of the exact lineages of a mutable virus are likely to change or remain forever ambiguous. The other story indicates that recognition of the virus was a lagging factor, which is a mixture of understandable factors such as not considering the possibility of a novel virus for the earliest cases, to inertia or official resistance to recognizing an inconvenient threat to stability, metrics like GDP, or legitimacy.
That's one reason why nations in Asia with history with SARS-1 started mobilizing once news started to spread, and clamped down so fast. Even if officials acted with all possible speed, the places that could detect the virus would have found it after the fact, and they would need time to see a trend. The most strident voices for action were often those that understood from previous epidemic timelines that the first warnings were late ones for an exponentially growing threat.
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