That requires a government so competent they immediately notice the significance of a claimed breakthrough by a foreign lab and coordinate an information campaign where their leading scientists act all skeptical just like leading scientists in other countries, denying rumours that the Academy of Sciences is working on a replication etc., ... but completely fail to act on similar rumours sparked at the same time by screenshots of a HUST professor getting all excited about his university's replication work in a group chat.
Usually, when the Chinese government is confronted with an unexpected development they want to suppress, the opposite happens: official spokespeople clam up, nobody has a statement ready, related keywords get censored more or less effectively on social media, until an official narrative is revealed that doesn't withstand further scrutiny but survives anyway because such scrutiny is censored as well.
So no, it's pretty much not the playbook they'd run if they were trying to discredit it.
Individual lab heads might do this sua sponte. Think: while everyone else is busy playing replication games you can work on reliably making LK-99 and beat everyone else to the punch on the more valuable patents and engineering glory.
Usually, when the Chinese government is confronted with an unexpected development they want to suppress, the opposite happens: official spokespeople clam up, nobody has a statement ready, related keywords get censored more or less effectively on social media, until an official narrative is revealed that doesn't withstand further scrutiny but survives anyway because such scrutiny is censored as well.
So no, it's pretty much not the playbook they'd run if they were trying to discredit it.