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.

Some claim that SARS could be China's Chernobyl, the 1986 nuclear accident that signaled the decline of the Soviet Union. Sadly, claims that these episodes could herald a new era in Chinese governance are overstated. It is more likely that factions within the government will use the disasters to further their own interests. Take the personnel shuffles that have occurred in recent weeks. While the dismissal of Health Minister Zhang Wenkang was justified -- Mr. Zhang had denied that SARS was a serious problem -- firing Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong was not. Mr. Zhang was a member of former President Jiang Zemin's faction; Mr. Meng was not. He was forced to step down apparently as a way of maintaining balance in the leadership.

It is tempting to see a similar pattern at work with the announcement of the submarine disaster. Mr. Jiang's only formal leadership position is chairman of the Central Military Committee; publicity is seen as a way of discrediting him.

Since taking office, President Hu has tried to demonstrate his solidarity with the Chinese people, posing a sharp contrast to Mr. Jiang. He has made high-profile speeches and visits to the countryside, stressing his concern for the common people. The new leadership could use SARS to shift priorities to health care and other human services that will have a tangible impact on many Chinese lives, a marked change from the priority given to "trophy" projects that emphasize China's development and salute the Communist Party.

Or it might not. It is always risky to bet that a new generation is made up of closet reformers. Rarely do revolutionaries work their way up the party hierarchy. Typically, the younger generation wants to do better than its predecessors and improve the system that they oversee -- not bring it down. Even Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw firsthand the disastrous results of the Chernobyl disaster, intended to make the Soviet Union's communist system work better, not to undermine it.

Chinese leaders take solace in the flexibility of their political system. Communist Party doctrine has proven remarkably adaptable, surviving the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the go-go capitalism initiated by Mr. Deng Xiaoping. The CCP leadership has survived all the twists and turns, savage political infighting and purges.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a tragedy whose effects have been magnified by bureaucratic incompetence and the assumed infallibility of the Communist Party, but it is not a threat to the survival of the system -- yet. A prolonged epidemic that cut drastically into China's growth would undermine the CCP's legitimacy, and that could threaten the leadership. But in a disaster of that scale, the fate of the government in Beijing would be the least of the world's worries.