This failure of accountability within China's government should be regarded as a crime against all humanity not just against Chinese citizens.
What's most lacking in humanity's preparedness towards anything that threatens us globally is the ability to get our governments under control. An even sneakier aspect of COVID-19's sneakiness is its ability to exploit our greatest weakness, sneaky governments run by sneaky exploitive politicians.
I think initially the Chinese government didn't realise the extent of the damage the virus could cause and tried to keep it under wraps, but once they did, they built hospitals and locked up the entire country. They apologized to the whistleblower doctor and tried to warn the rest of us.
So many westerns countries were in denial and acted slowly even AFTER seeing what happened to China, is it really difficult to grasp that China was in denial in the early stages of the pandemic before much was known about the pathology of the virus?
Not to say they were totally innocent. Covering up and lying about numbers is terrible, but a lot of the venom against them now is hindsight. I don't really think anyone expected this to happen, and if they did, we are equally guilty of reacting terribly.