Well the health related lockdown means they can enact unpopular legislation or make unpopular moves and the opposition is cornered. They can’t protest and risk health, giving authorities a proximate reason to crack down even harder in the name of health... so nice opportune time .

I remember seeing many protesters in Hong Kong with gas masks to protect their identities and themselves from the police counter-protest measures. Is a virus too small to be filtered out by a gas mask?

Unfortunately I see a lot of parallels here, such as declassifying a lot of embarrassing information knowing it will get covered up by covid news.

Declassifying government shenanigans isn’t in the same league as crushing a dissent movement knowing they cannot protest.

I agree - everyone had been fawning over China and their impressive response to COVID-19. But the CCP is facing a existential threat right now that they may not be ready for.

China is not so easy to keep united, there are a ton of varied and potentially conflicting interests. Easy to keep conflict down when the pie is growing for everyone, much more difficult when the economy is falling apart at the seams and the US is beginning to get scared of how big you are getting and starting to close its market to your exports...

We'll see how they manage it, based on early returns it is is looking to be ugly. Xi is ramping up the nationalist rhetoric and burning down any soft power they've built up with the West in the process. The violent language towards "rogue provinces" is increasing, they are churning up the populace with anger and hoping it stays channeled externally.