One reason for the early cover-up is that Xi’s China has systematically gutted institutions like journalism, social media, nongovernmental organizations, the legal profession and others that might provide accountability. These institutions were never very robust in China, but on and off they were tolerated until Xi came along.

I conducted a series of experiments on Chinese blogs over the years beginning in 2003 and was sometimes surprised by what I could get away with — but no longer. Xi has dragged China backward in terms of civil society, crushing almost every wisp of freedom and oversight.

For the same reason that Xi’s increasingly authoritarian China bungled the coronavirus outbreak, it also mishandled a swine fever virus that since 2018 has devastated China’s hog industry and killed almost one-quarter of the world’s pigs.

Dictators often make poor decisions because they don’t get accurate information: When you squelch independent voices you end up getting just flattery and optimism from those around you. Senior Chinese officials have told me that they are routinely lied to on trips to meet local officials and must dispatch their drivers and secretaries to assess the truth and gauge the real mood.

For this or other reasons, Xi has made a series of mistakes. He mishandled and inflamed the political crisis in Hong Kong, he inadvertently assured the re-election of his nemesis as president of Taiwan, and he has presided over worsening relations with the United States and many other countries.

The coronavirus has already reached the Xinjiang region in the Far West of China, and one risk is that it will spread in the internment camps where China is confining about one million Muslims with poor sanitation and limited health care.

Viruses are challenges for any country, and it’s only fair to note that China does a better job protecting its people from measles than the U.S. does. It’s a credit to China’s system that a baby born in Beijing today has a longer life expectancy than a baby born in Washington, D.C. More broadly, the United States, which has several impoverished counties with lower life expectancy than Cambodia or Bangladesh, is in no position to lecture anyone about health.