I do not know exactly what they (China) planned from the start, but seeing from the quick handling they have done on Covid-19 patients has proven that they are the country that is most ready to deal with the Covid-19 virus. it's likely they had predicted this outbreak first..
But what I have to say about this point you raised is that if the information I have is correct, China is the first hit of this virus late last year and we should expect that they would have gone to working on it as early as possible. Moreover, the Chinese economy is buoyant enough and they are proactive people in terms of like this and technology plus they are cooperative nation. So they might have abided by the rules to avoid bitter spread. There was also a time that China suffered more death than every country.
I thought of it many times before, I used to think that China is so enormous that they have avoided the market collapse even with a huge problem on their front now but that is not the case, given that the USA and most part of Europe has more time to prepare for the coronavirus they could've lessen the damages. What is more intriguing about this is the China's economy is not shaken by this, millions of people are affected in China not only in Wuhan, in that scale their stock market should have been down unlike what happened to many countries around the globe.
Also, China is not the only country that seem to have controlled this pandemic. I think Korea, Singapore and Germany to my knowledge have really worked against it and I believe soon other countries would come out from it.
Yeah, some countries are handling the virus so well like the said countries but have you noticed that they are China's allied? Russia and NK seems to be not affected by the virus. Why do you think so?