Although highly contagious, the Chinese coronavirus is not the nastiest infectious microorganism that epidemiologists have known. If it has infected more than 31,000 people, killed at least 637, almost exclusively in China, and has already spread to 25 countries, it is largely thanks to a powerful ally: the "socialist system of concentrated power ”, which the leaders of the Communist Party still believe can present as an asset against the epidemic.
President Xi Jinping's authoritarianism allows him to order the strict confinement of hundreds of millions of people and to bring up giant hospitals from the ground in a few days. But if he loses the confidence of the Chinese, they could denounce the implicit contract by which they renounce their individual freedoms in exchange for security and prosperity. Anger is expressed more and more openly in the country: that it prevails over fear and the regime will have to face a
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