China’s history can be understood as a succession of imperial dynasties, of which the CCP’s is just the latest. Each of the dozens of dynasties sought, with varying degrees of success, to impose order on — by Western standards — a vast populace. Periodically, however, the Middle Kingdom would descend into dongluan— turmoil. For example, one of the most destructive conflicts of the modern times was the huge and bloody civil war that raged when the Taiping movement challenged the Qing dynasty between 1850 and 1864.

A key part of the legitimacy of the Communist Party’s rule is that, according to the regime’s version of history, there was much more chaos before 1949 than after it. Indeed, a central element of Xi Jinping’s claim to an extended term as China’s leader is — as a former minister once vehemently explained to me — that he “saved the Party, saved the army, saved the state” from a new era of turmoil caused by chronic corruption and political infighting.

So is Covid’s revenge on its country of origin the beginning of a new era of turmoil? How big will the economic consequences be of Xi’s last-ditch effort to maintain Zero Covid? Could these in turn undermine Xi’s domestic-political position? Might this crisis prove to be even more consequential than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has so preoccupied the world for the past two months?