If there are large scale falsified numbers in China, local and national authorities are certainly acting like they believe them. People are out and about; restaurants are opening; going back to work.

I don't get how people can simultaneously think "China instituted unthinkable totalitarian measures to isolate and quarantine people" and "all the numbers out of China are false, it has to be undergoing exponential growth like other countries."

You can choose one or the other, but not both: they're not self-consistent.

They are self-consistent if “unthinkable totalitarian measures” didn’t work, and the Chinese government has switched to a mitigation strategy without informing the populace.

If you think that people being locked up in their apartments for a month would result in the same transmission rates as people going about their lives freely, I don't know what to tell you: apart from all the other fantastic properties people have imagined SARS-CoV-2 to have, it also apparently can magically infect people who don't have contact with it.

Even if testing completely stopped, presumably an over-strained health system would be obvious and almost impossible to hide.

I can see why people are extremely resistant to believing anything the Chinese government says, but there seem to be indicators that don't rely on their statements.

So, how strained exactly are China hospitals?

Because I certainly don't know it, and there isn't anybody around here talking about this for some reason (and ok, even if there were, it would be hard to know if they are reliable - and yes, the entire world knows the reason, China prohibited talking about it).

"China hospitals" is a bit broad. From my perspective in Beijing, at least, the hospitals here are on high alert but not at all strained.