Back-to-back calamities are forcing China's leaders to adopt new approaches to governance. A government accustomed to ruling without challenge is now under pressure to restore public confidence in its leadership. Hopes that this might lead to more broad-based political reform are premature, however. The Chinese Communist Party has shown a remarkable ability to adapt. The opportunities presented by recent tragedies are more likely to be exploited in internal party struggles. The Chinese people will have to wait still longer before they benefit from these misfortunes.

The Chinese government's failure to cope with the SARS outbreak is well known. The disease surfaced late last year in southern China, but the party leadership played down accounts of "atypical pneumonia" as part of its suppression of bad news before and during the party congress that began the official leadership transition. As the outbreak spread, political and medical authorities kept a tight lid on information. The result was an epidemic that has since circled the globe, killed hundreds, hospitalized thousands more, shattered regional economies and ruined the credibility of the Beijing government. Only after concerted international pressure, the public humiliation of the leadership and near panic at home did the Chinese leadership acknowledge the scale of the problem and take serious measures to combat it.

Then, last week, came reports of an accident on one of China's submarines that claimed the lives of all 70 crew members. Rather than cover up the incident as in the past, the government acknowledged the mishap on the front pages of newspapers, and President Hu Jintao urged the People's Liberation Army to speed up its modernization program. The coverage suggested that the new government has learned lessons from its mishandling of the SARS crisis.