When the pandemic started, China wasn't that paranoid about new infections, what changed now?
They locked down Wuhan early on. Foreign travel was severely restricted. I don't think anything really changed, they always had the intent to contain it completely.
New mutation or not, it's not sensible to have such strict measures, when the rest of the Western world is easing measures.
I can't argue that it's sensible - most of the actions of the Chinese government don't make sense to me, and starving their citizens is definitely one of those things.
But the immunity levels are most likely very different between China and the West where almost everyone had some strain of COVID.
Certainly, they did have strict policies since the beginning, but I don't recall seeing such action taken against their citizens. They've literally locked them up, with no access to anywhere, while the government is distributing food that to me, doesn't look enough for a household.
In early 2020, Chinese citizens were locked inside their apartments, and people starved to death. The "lockdowns" employed by the West was something exported from China. Prior to covid, "lockdowns" were not considered to be something health officials considered to prevent the spread of contagious viruses.
Certainly, they didn't have as many infections as Europe and USA, but it looks incredibly cruel to see such practices.
China did not report having as many infections as Western countries did. The Chinese government also lies. I draw different conclusions than you.
China was the first country to come up with lockdown measures, however, I don't recall them being so harsh. This situation has gone out of control, the measures weren't so absurdly strict, they're dragging people out of their homes and euthanizing pets, that's ridiculous.
Certainly, it was the first country to lie about Covid-19, if it wasn't for their cover-up during the early stages of the pandemic, we would have avoided many deaths in Italy and other European countries, who were severely affected.