That's the whole point. If you slow it down you can avoid the rapid spike in severe cases that overwhelm the system. It's like traffic -- once you surpass a certain volume, the system locks up and throughput drops.

And that in itself is a huge accomplishment that will save many lives.

I think the point was to do a controlled restart while making sure the rate of secondary infections remains low enough that the impact of the coronavirus remains less than the flu.

What is your source? I can't see anything visible in the Hopkins data, and all news stories seem to be about continued stability in China.

source? China seems to have very low numbers of new infections right now

I work for a company with significant manufacturing in China, our source is people on the ground. So, Anecdata, but well-connected anecdata.