Nothing surprising here, unlike what the title would have you believe.

TL;DR: Authoritarian Chinese government controls the media/social media narratives as usual. Succeeds in controlling pandemic while a certain US media outlet stirs emotion and clicks by blaming others for its government's own failures.

C'mon, China's authoritarianism is a big problem, but we dropped the ball in a big way at the start of the pandemic. Doesn't look like there was a big cover-up of millions of cases; China is practically back to normal now, and we're not. Obviously, that's because they got stuff done while we sat around respecting people's autonomy. The only cover-up China had was the usual propaganda and supression.