https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China
Look at “Index case.”
They were already making the vaccine by January 2020:
“In January 2020, Moderna announced development of an RNA vaccine, codenamed mRNA-1273, to induce immunity to SARS-CoV-2.“
Understood - but there’s nothing inconsistent or unusual about it - that comes after, not before. The world was already abuzz by that point about COVID-19. So I’m not sure what point you were trying to make with your initial post. It was also already well known that mRNA technology for producing vaccines had been underway for a very long time before that as well.