In early February, a leaked audio recording featuring former Harvard–Yenching Institute scholar Huang Wansheng’s candid take on a range of sensitive topics at a private gathering in January started circulating on the internet. Huang, 72, disclosed that he was rushed back to China from the United States in July 2020, when the pandemic was spreading quickly around the globe and many countries were in lockdown. He said that people in the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party paid 170,000 yuan (about $26,815) for his one-way ticket, and that he encountered delays and pains in getting his wife over from...