Whether out of malice or just the difficulty of testing corpses with inadequate supplies s, I thought it was widely assumed all countries were underreporting in at least 2020 and probably further. Therefore, everyone serious looked at excess deaths.

That's not how excess death calculations work. They would have to not report the deaths entirely, not just misattribute them.

Can you explain in detail what would be stopping them? I'm not seeing it.

Ok, so conspiracy theory logic.

The CCP hiding deaths is not new at all. Covid is one of many at this point.