The coronavirus is devastating for the Chinese Communist Party.

Basically, the deal with the populace was people gave up their freedom in exchange for competent government and economic growth. In the last several decades, this was seen as a good deal, by a lot of people both inside and outside China. China had massive economic growth and modernization.

Now, however, the handling of coronavirus was a huge blow to the perception of competency of the government, and is likely to have big economic implications as well, thereby threatening the foundations of this deal.