Xu Zhangrun, too, points out its inherent paradoxes, notably the ones revealed by the constant expansion of “big data totalitarianism” and “WeChat terror.” “The Chinese body politic is riven by a new canker,” he declares, “but it is an infection germane to the system itself.”

Where, then, is the country headed as it increasingly stymies the rights of its citizens and stifles civil society?

For Xu Zhangrun:

“The authorities have blocked off all possible roads that may imaginably lead to positive change. We must seriously doubt whether any form of peaceful transition might now even be conceivable.”

For Xu Zhiyong:

“I’m deeply concerned about our nation’s future; I’m afraid that a system that is so tightly wound up is a dangerously brittle one; and, I’m worried that there is no meaningful or substantive form of civil society that can deal with the situation.”

Yet Xu Zhiyong rejects the view promoted by the Chinese Communist Party and some of its fellow-travelers that a country as vast and complex as China is unsuited to constitutional rule and democracy: “There are those who argue that China needs a strongman to lead it. I would posit that the kind of authority figure we need should be more like Chiang Ching-kuo,” he writes, referring to the president of Taiwan from 1978 to 1988 (and son of Chiang Kai-shek) who steered the country toward the end of martial law and undertook the reforms that eventually transformed it into a modern democracy. But instead, says Xu Zhiyong, addressing Mr. Xi, “With your move away from collective leadership in favor of your own one-man dictatorship, you are driving the country backward.”

The president of China, shortly after coming to power in late 2012, famously quoted an ancient Chinese poem about the fall of a kingdom to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: No “True Men” (or “Real Men,” in some translations) had come forward to defend it. Now, Xu Zhiyong was pointing out caustically to Mr. Xi:

“How can you expect there to be a ‘True Man’ when you, The Revered One, sit at the pinnacle with millions fawning at the foot of your throne? Autocracy encourages sycophants to crowd around the Emperor, but this particular Emperor’s new clothes are on full display for all to see. Yet, even now, the people of China dare not ‘comment inappropriately’ about what is in front of them.”

“Well,” Xu Zhiyong continues, “I’m like that kid who blurted out the truth: The Emperor has no clothes!”

Indeed. He and Xu Zhangrun have raised their voices at a moment of national emergency, both well aware that their warnings may prove not only futile, but also, for them, suicidal.

Xu Zhangrun’s essay ends with a plea:

“Faced with the crisis of the coronavirus, confronting this disordered world, I join my compatriots — the 1.4 billion men and women, brothers and sisters of China, the countless multitudes who have no way of fleeing this land — and I call on them: rage against this injustice; let your lives burn with a flame of decency; break through the stultifying darkness and welcome the dawn.”

A few days after the publication of these texts, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist and early whistle-blower in Wuhan, died, having been infected by the virus. The outpouring of grief expressed throughout China took the party aback.

And so it tried to regain control of the narrative by casting Dr. Li as a brave soldier in the “people’s war” against the virus: He and other health care workers infected on the job — their number now exceeds 3,300 people — were praised for making sacrifices for the party, the state and the people, in that order.