You don't know that.
"Don't lie" and "don't censor your own citizens calling you out on your lies" mean exactly what it says in the tin.
I didn't say "call Xi and tell him it's the lab!" I say don't force trusted institutions to lie for you, and if somebody posts a dissenting opinion on Facebook, you let them, or deal with the consequences (lack of trust in institutions for a few generations).
Now I'm confused what you're referring too. If we don't want to have them stir up the possibility of China having had a lab leak they're hiding, your institutions kind of have to keep quiet on that front no?
> if somebody posts a dissenting opinion on Facebook, you let them, or deal with the consequences
Has this actually been shown to have occurred without a doubt? That official government had content censored on social media? I have not seen definitive proof of this, but I'm open to the possibility, so asking if I missed something.
What I'm aware of is that some institutions did reach out to social media platforms to encourage them to limit misinformation and sometimes provided links to what they thought was misinformation or foreign interference.
But they did not compell them to take down material that I'm aware of.
That said, I do find it an interesting debate as if even asking for certain information to be taken down or limited, even if not ordered or enforced, as in, social media companies can refuse without consequences. If that we feel is too coercive, since they might feel more pressured to not refuse given it's the government asking, even if in theory they can, and we know in practice that they sometimes have.
You want to claim no censorship happened because the TLAs with the monopoly on violence "only asked"? Ok. Cool. Still, after their shenanigans-which-are-for-sure-not-censorship, now fewer people trust science, medicine, government and media.
You claim it was the right decision in order to appease China? There was nothing to collaborate with them on, and if there was they didn't collaborate anyway, so no, I don't think it was the right decision even at the time.