I just googled China COVID Death rate and every story is about China underreporting at every step of the process. The fact you believe anything coming from that government is sad and stupid. China trying to pass off zero COVID deaths is just another indicator at a failing state under an oppressive and deadly regime.
The excess death rate, again something that can't be faked, proves China outperformed everyone else.
They can lie an say a death from COVID was actually a heart attack or a stroke or the flu, but they can't just disappear bodies and pretend they're still alive.
Here's three articles on the messing with COVID numbers and hiding true death counts. It's incredibly easy to hide true death tolls in such a large country that's effectively cut off from the rest of the world's news. If you control the data being pushed out and there's a severe lack of checking if they're true or not, it's incredibly easy to hide deaths, either misreporting them like you mentioned or just not reporting them at all. Current US death rates from COVID are 1 million, while investigations form the NYT reports at least triple that in China, if not more. Again, failed state under an oppressive and deadly regime.
Manipulating COVID death counts isn't disappearing the actual deaths themselves. We know deaths still happened, like the Time article said "China’s True COVID Death Toll Estimated To Be in Hundreds of Thousands" - so let us assume that's completely true!
1.4 billion people live in China. The fact that only a few hundred thousand died is a miracle that almost no other country can match when you actually start comparing numbers directly. China outperformed everyone else when you measure how many people died against how many people didn't die. If China just let er rip like America did, over 6 million would have died. Think about that.
You misread the article, that hundreds of thousands statistic is only for the most recent batch of COVID. Also, if China and the US are comparable, it would be about 4 million. If China was comparable to another country, like say Ireland, it would be around 2.5 million. My figure of about 3 million seems accurate enough for this argument. Your devotion to this regime is unfortunate, you should consider reevaluating your decisions and take a fresh look at the awfulness that happens to the people of China everyday.