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And social media has been more than a vehicle for information: It has also spawned more journalism and a greater variety of voices in recent years. Some of the deeper coverage of the coronavirus crisis has come from nontraditional, online-only news sites, like Tengxun and Sohu, which officially arent allowed to carry out independent reporting, and so-called self-media (zi meiti in Chinese), self-operated social-media accounts that produce anything from entertainment to political commentary. Some of these platforms are now profitable, run by former journalists, and feature citizen journalism.

But the window for critical reporting in times of crises tends to be quite narrow, and it opens and shuts rather unpredictably. This is partly because officials practice what I have described elsewhere as guarded improvisation: With social stability as their ultimate aim, the authorities try to strike a fragile balance between political control and curated transparency, alternating between censorship or propaganda and allowing the media, or its surrogates, to press for accountability.

I found, for example, that news investigations into the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, in 2008 more than 69,000 dead were allowed only for a few weeks. After accounts revealed that poorly built schools had contributed to the death toll, the government blocked independent inquiries into the disaster.

Once a crisis seems like it could cause social instability especially when public blame appears to shift from the local to the central authorities the government starts reining in the media and tries to co-opt it into delivering a unified, official message. Even Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalistic Global Times, has called out the Wuhan government for silencing whistle-blowers in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. On the other hand, some critical articles about the epidemic though not necessarily the hardest-hitting ones have already vanished from the internet.

There is no telling how much longer Chinese journalists and concerned citizens will be able to report on and raise hard questions about the crisis. But its worth remembering that authoritarianism also is the mother of creativity. Chinas efforts to steer, muffle or control the media have produced alternative news sources that subtly, indirectly skirt restrictions. And this, the authorities tolerate, to a point. Even under President Xi Jinping, the government is sensitive and somewhat responsive to bottom-up pressure from the people their need to know, their calls for accountability. In China, too, as the coronavirus epidemic reveals, there is a social contract between the public and the party-state.

Maria Repnikova (@MariaRepnikova) is an assistant professor of Global Communication at Georgia State University and the author of Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism.

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The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic - The New York Times