People are mentioning Italy and infection rates but may not know that China bought much of the manufacturing in Milan and has upwards of half a million Chinese Nationals working there and managers routinely flew from China to Milan.
I think of it as am early conduit to spread Covid to Europe. Only the Chinese Govt. knew they were infecting Europe. Same with Seattle, CA airports and a number of other nodes.
If there was a Country with zero scruples and its economy was secretly in serious trouble an engineered virus would be the perfect way to lower the standards of living Worldwide so their slide into recession was not the only economic disaster in the news.