First of all, it's kind of aside from the point of this thread which is to call out racist, violent abusive criminals who are assaulting those of Asian descent.

But as far as the Chinese government, it is run by the Chinese Communist Party... so let's start by discussing Taiwan. Taiwan went into defense mode, shutting down travel, as soon as they heard about the Wuhan situation some time around December/January. The Party poo-pooed what Taiwan was saying and doing and hurt Taiwan's ability to discuss this with the international community - even though Taiwan was correct and the Party was wrong at the time in the beginning stages of the pandemic. The Party did this for political reasons - in other words it put politics before human life and health. Despite it's past failings with SARS when it said it would improve, the Party made the same mistakes again, allowing politics to control policty instead of public health scientists and experts. (Yes I know they are not unique... the difference is that the Party never gets voted out of power because there is no voting)

Then there was the Party treatment of doctors like Li Wenliang, who was harassed for discussing the virus in the early days of the pandemic. The Party is obsessed with social order and "harmonious" society, when they should be listening to the science and public health experts.

Then there is the question of why the Party allows wet markets and bushmeat at all, after the SARS situation and the MERS situation many years ago they should have shut down all of those markets forever.

The fact that the Party did some good things later on does not make up for the fact that it did a lot of bad things that made the situation worse at the beginning. That is because the Party runs a monolithic government and Xi Jinping is the self declared dictator for life. So that Party has to own everything the government does, not just the good stuff.