That's a very important point if we're discussing the upsides and downsides of censorship, or whether China is a bad country and should feel bad about itself.

But if we're looking for an example of how to solve the pandemic, when people point to China as an example, they aren't saying "we should spend a few weeks pretending the virus doesn't exist, threaten doctors who talk about it, order our labs not to study it, and THEN take decisive action". They're saying we should do the stuff that China did, starting from the decisive action part.