AP Photo

It’s too soon to know what went wrong—and what went as well as could be expected—at Japan’s nuclear plants, but watching one of the world’s engineering powers struggle to stem the damage to its plants reminded me of a squib of news from November that didn’t attract much attention at the time: a Beijing court gave a life sentence to Kang Rixin, a senior Party apparatchik convicted of taking bribes and abusing his position to enrich others. One detail about Kang’s case stands out in...