Communist regimes are notorious for their apparatchiks over-promising and exaggerating the achievements of their directorates. Every year of Stalin’s Five Year Plan they reported record grain harvests while people starved.
Prior to 2019 the leaders of the Wuhab Biowarfare lab had bragged to their masters in Beijing that they had invented an awesome super-killer virus, bred from bats, one that was long lived, easily transmitted, and would wipe out an invading army in a couple weeks.
Then the virus escaped into Wuhan somehow, and Beijiing freaked out because they believed all the hype from the earlier reports they had received bragging about the super-virus, so they barricaded whole cities, welding doors shut on quarantined homes, etc.
Halon’s Razor: Don’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
That is an interesting hypothesis. And quite plausible. However I do think at some point the Chinese realized the truth and weaponized the fear.