They've also saved themselves some of the long-term cost of long COVID, which is a fun mystery we've signed up for in the US. Also weren't they working with a less effective vaccine?
And this happened yesterday: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-delays-release-eco... . The market opinion is that the financial data is very bad so they don't want to release it. And this is quite coupled to their ongoing Covid policies.
I'm not sure that is true in general, but it is unfortunately true for the elderly in China - precisely the population they want to protect. They've sort of screwed themselves by not vaxxing the elderly at high rates.
So what gives?