Why did China do such a flip-flop on Covid?

After the so-called “Zero Covid” experiment, China now reports that 37 million people are being infected each day.  What ever happened to the Golden Mean?  Why not move smoothly along a curve?  Even after three years’ time, it seems they did little to prep their hospitals.  What are some hypotheses for this sudden leap from one corner of the distribution to the other?

1. The Chinese people already were so scared of Covid, the extreme “no big deal” message was needed to bring them around to a sensible middle point.  After all, plenty of parts of China still are seeing voluntary social distancing.

2. For Chinese social order, “agreement” is more important than “agreement on what.”  And agreement is easiest to reach on extreme, easily stated and explained policies.  Zero Covid is one such policy, “let it rip” is another.  In the interests of social stability China, having realized its first extreme message was no longer tenable, has decided to move to the other available simple, extreme message.  And so they are letting it rip.

3. The Chinese elite ceased to believe in the Zero Covid policy even before the protests spread to such an extreme.  But it was not possible to make advance preparations for any alternative policy.  Thus when Zero Covid fell away, there was a vacuum of sorts and that meant a very loose policy of “let it rip.”

4. After three years of Zero Covid hardship, the Chinese leadership feels the need to “get the whole thing over with” as quickly as possible.

To which extent might any of these be true?  What else?