I cannot entirely agree with the take of some “China experts” on the so-called “competent pandemic policy.” Such a narrative precisely fits in with the CCP leadership’s wishes (正中下怀), but it is not logically sound.
The main issue is that there are uncontrolled covariates when comparing outcomes across countries.
Another source of selection bias is related to testing.
To be clear, by no means am I blindly defending the Trump administration’s poor COVID-19 response, but I believe many popular narratives are dead wrong if one cares to dig a little deeper into the data.