I don't think that most folks understand why they are locking down and welding folks into buildings.
And no, its not because of COVID.
China is in a terminal condition. There is NOTHING that can prevent its guaranteed collapse. Nothing. Its seeds were started 40 years ago.
China has a people problem. and no, its not because they have too many.
When the 1 child policy started there was legitimate concern that the population was growing to fast to support on a marginal agrarian society. As this was enforced, and with the opening of China to the west and redirection into a more "capitalistic" society, several economic and cultural shifts occured.
1. The wealth of the country exploded as the west willingly exchanged its manufacturing for cheap trinkets supplied by basic slave labor of the CCP
2. People began to obtain the finer things in life in China, and sought more income, education and wealth. This necessarily further dropped the birth rate further than was anticipated.
3. Families preferentially aborted female babies due to cultural valuing of the boys. This resulted in a societal imbalance where there are 33 million more men than women in the country--with no hope of ever having spouses, emotional connections, or families. Historically these men become more radicalized and disaffected.
4. Over the next 40 years or so, the populations aged and now are known as the "silver" generation. 250 million of them. A lot of the middle class wealth in China is represented here, and they are now aged out of job space and receive pensions.
5. The ratio of workers to those that are supported by the proceeds of that labor has in the past been around 2:1. In the next decade it will drop to 1:1 and the Chinese government will face tens of trillions of Yuan in annual remittances. There are not enough workers there to support their social programs which are at the heart of the communist/socialist system.
6. The chinese government known this. They are trying to address the time bomb which is ticking faster and faster. They expanded to a 2 child policy and now a 3 child policy but it will take DECADES for that to have any tangible effect. This is made worse by the overestimation of the Chinese population--thought to have peaked perhaps a decade ago at 1.4 billion people. They overestimated it by 100 million--most of whom were aborted females so there is no way to increase the reproductive rate effectively. With the current age of the chinese population by 2050 the population of china will fall by 50% to ~650 million. This will CRUSH the economic ability of china as it destroys the only thing they have had to exploit--cheap labor.
Now then, why lock up, quarantine, etc? You need SELECTIVE culling. Preferentially kill the elderly who will cost too much in benefits, seize their assets for the state to convert the economy to a technological driven/automation driven one which can operate on a massively reduced labor pool to increase overall productivity. The only other option is to invade and enslave, which is not out of the realm of possibility but less likely as you don't want to send millions of your youth to die as they are needed for "breeding". The urgency for which they need to switch to a technology/automation economy is such that it makes it plain as to why our moves to shut them out of the tiawanese chips market and their eyeing it as a target make so much sense.