Thread by @ericfish85

Reading takes about how coronavirus is presenting the Communist Party with a crisis of legitimacy and could challenge its rule is giving me déjà vu from the 2008 Melamine scandal, Wenzhou train crash, Wukan protests, Beijing floods, Southern Weekend protests, Tianjin explosions…

Coronavirus is much worse than any of those things and we still have no idea how bad it’s going to get – obviously it’s a catastrophe and a huge challenge to Xi the Communist Party – but I’d be surprised if Xi and the CCP don’t come out of this just fine.

The sequence of events in all these crises has pretty much been:
1. Crisis rooted in or inflamed by corruption/opaqueness/censorship/cover-ups emerges

2. Chinese social media lights up, with many furiously blaming/criticizing the government...

3. Foreign media and analysts see this and publish articles suggesting it’s eroding the Communist Party’s legitimacy or people’s trust in/support for the top leadership...

4. The crisis eventually peaks, pretty quickly fizzles out of the news cycle, and is basically forgotten a few weeks or months later.

Another sense of déjà vu I’m feeling: When Chai Jing’s “Under the Dome” was released, it blew up social media, literally the entire country was talking about it, and it felt like a sea change was almost inevitable—which itself was reminiscent of the 2013 Southern Weekend uproar.

And another thing that feels the same: the insistence that THIS event is different.

“But THIS affects people’s kids.” “THIS hits the middle class.” “THIS is public transport everyone uses.” “THIS is the air that everyone breathes.” “THIS is calling for free speech & press."

Maybe this time really will be different and there will be a serious political reckoning. Lord knows anything can happen in Chinese politics and nothing would really surprise me. But so much of it feels the same.

One thing that has tended to change with the above events: the Party becomes more paranoid and the "stability maintenance" apparatus becomes more sophisticated and unrelenting.

Having said all that👆, the reaction to all this should again challenge the notion that young Chinese (who make up the bulk of social media users) have become broadly, blindly supportive of the government, or that “patriotism” has been successfully melded with support of the CCP.

I’ve long argued that while regime change is not at all popular among young Chinese, reforms around the edges like less censorship, more government transparency/accountability, more freedom of speech, etc., are.

IF something big did happen (subversion/breakdown within the censorship/stability maintenance apparatus; multi-city street protests), I imagine scores of young people would eagerly jump on the bandwagon. I just find it unlikely (but not impossible) coronavirus will be that spark.