It's not necessary to trust the numbers. If they had large outbreaks, we would know. We are talking about a country of 1.4 billion people which has plenty of contact with the outside world, it's not North Korea. They could cook the numbers but it would just be impossible to hide widespread community spread.
And we can be darn sure the CIA would be screaming from the rooftops of all its propaganda outlets the perceived failings or weaknesses in China's COVID response. The silence there is all you need to hear to know what's up.
First off, accusations of being a shill go against HN rules.
Second, the numbers that come out of China are reliable. I actually think we have a much better picture of what's going on in China with CoVID-19 than we do in almost any country, because the case numbers are low enough that each case is publicly reported in detail.
Not only is there a daily rundown of the number of new cases in each city, but details about each case are published for contact-tracing purposes. When there are cases in a city in China, an itinerary of where the infected person has been over the past week or so is usually published, along with the person's rough address, age and occupation. Sometimes the family name is published as well. Often, there are requests from the authorities for people who were on specific trains or in specific places at specific times to get tested or quarantine, because they overlapped with a known case.
The measures taken on the ground match up very well with the case reports. If the case reports say that someone in building X has been infected, building X will be locked down, and people in the neighborhood will have to get tested. The converse is also true: you don't see buildings getting locked down or neighborhoods getting tested in the absence of specific case reports.
Finally, life has been close to normal in China for nearly two years now. If the virus were spreading, that wouldn't be possible. You can't have open restaurants and pubs without having massive waves of infections, and that simply isn't happening.
So yes, I trust the numbers. Pretty much everyone who has any experience in / connection with China believes that the numbers are at least roughly accurate.
/r/China has unfortunately become increasingly dominated by Americans who have little to no knowledge of China. It's one of the most bizarre national subreddits, in that it's become a forum for people outside the country to hate on the country.
I speak Chinese and know lots of people in China. That's how I know what's going on. I'm not reliant on Reddit threads. My friends in China have been doing normal things throughout the pandemic, like going to restaurants with their elderly relatives or going to crowded tourist venues (inside China). They can't easily travel internationally, because they will have to quarantine on returning to China, but they can live a pretty normal life inside the country.
I can back you up on this. I lived in China in 2017-2018 and have friends in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. As skeptical as I am of Chinese reportings, it really does sound like they've kept Covid under control for the last year and a half. Everyone I know there is doing normal things and has moved on with their lives, with the caveat that -- as you said -- international travel is all but impossible. A few of my friends who went on vacation outside of China during Chinese New Year 2020 have still not been allowed to go back.
A few months ago, a Shenzhen friend said she had to go on a business trip to Shanghai, and was a little worried because there had been 2 reported Covid cases in the last few weeks. Another friend, earlier in the pandemic, would mockingly send me US statistics of million of Americans getting Covid, and that it's nearly eradicated China.
It frightens me to think of what means they took to get these ends, but I really do believe they have it under control.