1. I believe it is a bio weapon that got out of the research facility someway in Wuhan. The Chinese were definitely working on bioweapons, Wuhan has a facility for such purpose, and the Chinese back in August 2018 were refusing all requests for the sharing of flu samples from USA, UK, etc. as what they were supposed to do under international agreement with the WHO. These requests were being made on deaf Chinese ears for over a year.

2. I don't believe it is a surprise attack. China itself took the brunt of it. The damn thing got out of containment somehow. If China really wanted to kill lots of its own people, lots of ways to do that. They could just go for broke and start the invasion of Taiwan as example.