In his 2016 book The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century, Norwegian political scientist Stein Ringen described contemporary China as a “controlocracy,” saying that its system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than what came before. China’s “controlocracy” now bears primary responsibility for the COVID-19 epidemic that is sweeping across that nation and the world. Over the past eight years, the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken steps to bolster Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) personal authority, as well as expanding the party’s own powers, at the...