If China was on the dark side of the moon and had design their policy without communication with other humans, this would be a defense, but it is not.

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China knows that almost all other nations have stopped lock-downs and quarantines a long time ago for three reasons:

a. they are incredibly disruptive to human quality of life

b. COVID has an absurdly high R0 and is very difficult to control from spreading

c. The mRNA vaccines are exceedingly effective at preventing severe disease

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China is also still doing weird things like practicing surface disinfection which has been shown to be more or less worthless as COVID does not reliably transmit through surfaces, but through airborne droplets.

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Their policy is arguably bad even in a vacuum, but obviously absurd when given what everyone else is doing. It's an open question if we could have stopped COVID from becoming endemic if we had rigorously enforced quarantine during the first few months, but that's been a complete impossibility for a long time now. I was in favor of very strict quarantine at the beginning, but policy needs to change with the times.

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A vaccination first strategy is the best path forward, along with general infectious disease control steps like mandatory paid sick days for all workers, requiring health care providers to stay home when sick, etc.