The pandemic happened to hit while we had a particularly idiotic populist demagogue in the White House, but even if we'd had someone more competent I still agree that China would have done better. Assuming you believe their numbers, China seems to be doing better than most of the world.

I chalk up China's governmental competence to the number of scientists and engineers involved in their government. It may be authoritarian and a bit of a nightmare, but unlike the majority of other governments in the world you have a few decision makers in there who have some clue how the world actually works. Most other government are run by lawyers, career bureaucrats, delusional ideologues, or leaders who inherited their position either officially via some line of succession or de-facto via institutional nepotism.

There are some of all those categories in China's government, but there are also apparently enough people who actually know how to do things in the real world.