That likely is not the case, because coronaviruses come from bats that live in China. But the Chinese haven't built up immunity to it (obviously).
A coworker of mine was in Thailand early this year, well before the pandemic hit Europe and North America (at least, officially). He said he was amazed at how cautious the entire country seemed to be. Everything was open for business as usual, and people were everywhere as usual (except for the missing Chinese vacationers, under lockdown), but everyone was masked up and every formal place with doors wouldn't let you in without a forehead temp scan. Temp scans setup at the airport as well.
So I would conjecture that they were simply very, very cautious, and it paid off.