Ordinary Chinese see through government propaganda and realize that the mishandling of the coronavirus is only one example of the regime’s ineptitude. Xi’s government also mishandled a swine fever outbreak that began in 2018 and has now killed almost one-quarter of the world’s pigs.

Earlier, China fumbled SARS. And at the beginning of the 2000s, it covered up an AIDS outbreak spread by government-backed blood collection efforts. Vast numbers of impoverished farmers and workers died, for the government response was not to help those infected but to punish doctor whistle-blowers. I will never forget a woman then who tried to give me her 4-year-old son because she was dying of AIDS and her husband had already died.

Granted, we Americans must have some humility in critiquing the regime, for it’s a tribute to China’s progress that a baby born in Beijing today has a longer official life expectancy (82 years) than a baby born in Washington, D.C. (78), or New York City (81).

Still, the progress came from China’s technocrats, doctors and scientists, the result in part of opening one new university a week for years. The peak of that technocratic, pragmatic approach came under Prime Minister Zhu Rongji in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

More recently, Xi has tugged China backward, stifling social media and journalism while cultivating something approaching a North Korea-style personality cult around himself. Xi’s propaganda apparatus extols him for personally directing the efforts against the virus and claims that the World Health Organization sent experts to learn from China’s wise handling of the coronavirus.

China’s economic and educational success has created a savvy middle class that feels betrayed when the government spouts nonsense and targets doctors rather than a coronavirus. Doctors on the front line are working almost around the clock with limited supplies, taping up masks, using goggles made of plastic folders and eating only one meal a day or wearing diapers so as to go to the bathroom less often (for that means removing protective clothing that can’t be replaced).

So far, more than 1,700 medical workers have been infected and at least six have died.

The contrast between heroic doctors and bumbling political leaders could not be more stark.