How China’s authoritarian system made the pandemic worse

SOMETIME IN November or December, a novel coronavirus infected a person in Wuhan, China, leading to an outbreak that became a global pandemic and exposed huge weaknesses in governance and leadership. In the case of China, the weakness was the system. A closed, authoritarian government repeatedly deceived and covered up the truth as the virus spread.

It is wrong to accuse China, based on present evidence, of willfully releasing a plague on the world. It is right to point out that China’s system and its deceptions made the situation worse,...