They are not doing this for anti-monopoly reasons. It's purely because they thought the tech companies had more data, and therefore more power than them.
One of the examples I've seen over here, which I can't seem to find in English, was an infographic created by Didi. Either stupidly or some tech dick-waving contest, they made a chart of the most hard working government agencies in Beijing. They had all this work habit data and they released it as a fun little thing.
Suffice it to say, it's hard to find now and a smaller part of a overarching data issue that has gone out of the government's hands.
Totalitarians are gonna totalitarian, but now they've learned to do it effectively and use the terminology the free world does to make it sound righteous.
Registering is one part of a thousand part process. Ask a small business owner, other than geography, would you rather operate in California or Texas. 9 out of 10 will say Texas.
The lies aren't for the international community, it's for the people of China.
If the wet market is at fault, it can be blamed on the local party leadership, which was easy enough to do because they continued to screw up during the early stages of the pandemic. One memorable one is when they hosted a massive dinner for 20000 people in close proximity when it was starting to really heat up.
If it's the lab, that squarely falls on the national government, which in all things can and must do no wrong.
A poster above said it perfectly, when your authority comes from competency, you need to show your competent. The CCP has this precarious position in China where the people support it strongly because they've been doing a good job giving people better lives, at least from their perspective. If that turns badly in any way, it could break them.