The Chinese government is ruthless. They kill anyone disloyal to the CCP. They tormented Taiwan and Hong Kong for years. Before COVID they couldn’t control the Hong Kong protests, and they saw Trump and rising populism in the West as a threat to their expansion. Somehow China is the only country that totally wiped out COVID and their economy is the only one that grew. It was the perfect plan, nobody would point fingers at them because Trump took that attention with his clownish behavior. Trump just couldn’t chill the fuck out and take the virus seriously.