Yuen Yuen Ang says President Xi Jinping is not invincible, despite his firm grip on power after abolishing term limits on his presidency in February 2018. Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, the country has been struggling to contain the disease, reflecting the political risks he faces if efforts to contain it fail. For a while he was out of the spotlight, triggering rising public anger at the leadership, which made it difficult for him to escape blame.

Critics say this health crisis is the worst in years and blame it on the culture of suppression that had led to the the death of a doctor and whistleblower earlier this month. As incompetence casts doubt on the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party, censorship has been ramped up. Despite the particular circumstances of a national emergency, the party seeks to control the coverage of the health crisis. Several activists and journalists have disappeared in recent weeks.

The author says some Chinese observers have been speculating that Xi’s grip on power “may be in peril,” since a cascade of events – economic slowdown, trade war with the US, and now the Coronavirus – had made him vulnerable, putting him to a profound test of the authoritarian system he has built around himself over the past seven years.

“If that seems unthinkable, it is worth remembering that the past years have produced events that few anticipated. Who predicted, for example, that an American real-estate mogul would face off with a Chinese princeling in an earth-shaking superpower rivalry, or that China might replace the United States as a champion for capitalist globalization?”

The author sees three possible outcomes for Xi in the coming months. “The most extreme, worst-case scenario is regime collapse.” But a “sudden dissolution” of an authoritarian regime “does not necessarily lead to democratization; in many cases, it leads to civil wa.” Iraq and Libya after the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi respectively are cases in point. A “violent power struggle within China” is at nobody’s interest. “Fortunately, this scenario is unlikely. Although China is under unprecedented stress, its economy has not come to a standstill.”

The second scenario is “a change in leadership at the highest level. Xi cannot avoid blame for the backlash against his restrictive domestic policies and assertive actions abroad, which had already begun to undercut support for him even before the COVID-19 epidemic…… In principle, Xi’s abolition of constitutional term limits allows him to stay on as president for life. But whether he actually will remain in office after his current term ends in 2022 is now an open question.” He will have to hope for better fortunes in the next two years that justify his remaining in power beyond 2022.

In the third scenario, “Xi clings to his post, but it is hollowed out and power shifts over to various other competing factions. Such an arrangement would not be without precedent.” Mao, after causing the deaths of some 30 million peasants as a result of his disastrous “Great Leap Forward,” stepped down as the country’s “paramount” leader, but remained the party chairman. “Later, he would stage a comeback, ushering in another decade-long disaster: the Cultural Revolution.”

The author is convinced that Chinese politics and governance “will not be the same after the COVID-19 outbreak. The myth that Xi and his supporters have sustained about the virtues of centralized control has been demolished.”

Before Dr. Li died, whose tragic death triggered widespread outrage as well as mourning, his parting words were – “A healthy society should not have only one voice”. His untimely death has ultimately enabled hundreds of millions of Chinese to speak with one voice. They are not willing to let regime censorship be imposed at the expense of public health and safety.