China decided it wasn't going to be the only country in the world that took a multi-trillion dollar hit from this virus. Everything it did after the outbreak grew out of control in Wuhan was designed to make sure it spread to other nations, especially in the West.
China's influence in the World Health Organization was employed to make sure WHO gave the worst possible advice at every stage: deriding masks as unnecessary, travel restrictions as an overreaction, freezing out Taiwan. To this day Taiwan says WHO isn't passing its info along.
China's outrageous undercounting of infections and fatalities, a charade that is just beginning to come unraveled despite the best efforts of its censors and propagandists, wasn't just about saving face. It was about tricking the world into underestimating the virus.
Notice how the thing that really enraged China, the "offense" that led them to kick reporters out of Beijing, was a Wall Street Journal op-ed that called them "the sick man of Asia." It hit too close to home, invoking their deepest fear.
The extremely high degree of failure in masks and test kits shipped by China is suspicious. China claims it stopped the virus cold with only 3k fatalities but its masks and tests don't work? That smacks of deliberate sabotage and/or death counts far higher than Beijing admits.
The virus hit China at a moment when its economy was already weakened (much more so than Beijing would admit - its economic statistics are as phony as its coronavirus data.) It has vast ambitions for programs like Belt and Road that would be ruined by travel bans and isolation.
China's agenda would be even more badly damaged if no other country suffered remotely as much of an economic hit from the coronavirus as it did. No way was it going to allow the epidemic to be bottled up in China. No way was it going to take the hit for the rest of the world.
And now that the Wuhan virus is everywhere, the Chinese Communist Party sees an opportunity. It can gain an industrial advantage by reopening its factories early, using ruthless measures no civilized nation would consider to suppress any new infection waves that appear.
The CCP knows its big advantage is ruthlessness. It will lock people in their homes and weld the doors shut to contain outbreaks. It will march Uyghur slave labor into factories long before they're safe. It will force its people to believe dangerous lies to make them work.
China just needed to defeat travel bans and sow enough confusion about effective defenses during a few crucial weeks in Feb and March to help the epidemic spread to all corners of the world. With help from international orgs it influences or controls like WHO, it succeeded. /end
