The uncertainty at the beginning likely helped them. At the beginning it was thought of being another SARS there while later in the west it was downplayed with

The uncertainty at the beginning likely helped them. At the beginning it was thought of being another SARS there while later in the west it was downplayed with the narrative of it being “like the flu”. Death tolls in China were covered up according to citizen media. There were reports of crematoriums running at full capacity in Wuhan in January 2020. It’s hard for people to die of covid if they haven’t even been tested. Before Wuhan locked down and covid tests became a thing face masks became mandatory in public. Police would arrest people who refused to wear a mask. They were temperature checking people in their homes and in public and quarantining them in camps too. They didn’t have an issue with PPE because they soaked up supplies even going so far as to request citizens in other countries to buy up local supply. While all their efforts have appeared to be effective their vaccine hasn’t been shown to be as effective as the alternatives so there is still a chance for things to go wrong though.