In When Crises Strike, China's Leaders Adapt to Survive, JOSEPH KAHN writes,

Humanitarian calamities have come and gone in China, often exposing the inhumanity of the Communist system but never really threatening party rule. The system, however authoritarian, paranoid and faction-ridden, has shown it can cope with natural and man-made disasters, which have claimed millions of lives, without relinquishing the levers of power....

"Every time something happens in China people in the West talk about this big challenge to one-party rule," said Dai Tianyan, a political scientist at the Central Party School of the Communist Party, in Beijing. "But we don't see it the same way."...

Longer term, the fear among some liberal-leaning analysts and journalists is that the crisis could actually feed the government's instinct to be heavy-handed. The central government needs more intrusive powers so that local officials do not hide problems, the thinking goes. The press has to be policed so it does not incite panic. Migrant workers must be controlled. Singaporean efficiency is the model.