But the jockeying today is no longer a zero-sum game in which a winner takes all.

Competition in the Communist Party is, of course, nothing new. Instead, the Politburo and its Standing Committee, China’s most powerful body, are run by two informal coalitions that compete against each other for power, influence, and control over policy. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic, and the ruling party is no longer led by one strongman, like Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping. Now, the crucial question is whether they are equipped to handle an economic crisis of this magnitude-and survive the political challenges it will bring. Double-digit growth has sheltered them through a SARS epidemic, massive earthquakes, and contamination scandals. No one realizes this possibility more than the handful of people who steer China’s massive economy. If China is no longer able to maintain a high growth rate or provide jobs for its ever growing labor force, massive public dissatisfaction and social unrest could erupt. Since Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms three decades ago, the party’s legitimacy has relied upon its ability to keep the economy running at breakneck pace. With this rapid downturn, the Chinese Communist Party suddenly looks vulnerable. The crisis, President Hu Jintao said recently, “is a test of our ability to control a complex situation, and also a test of our party’s governing ability.” During the same period, the Chinese stock market lost 65 percent of its value, equivalent to $3 trillion. In the last six months of 2008, 10 million workers, plus 1 million new college graduates, joined the already gigantic ranks of the country’s unemployed. Thousands of factories and businesses, especially those in the prosperous coastal regions, have closed. Exports, critical to China’s searing economic growth, have plunged. What was inconceivable a year ago now threatens their rule: an economy in freefall. The two dozen senior politicians who walk the halls of Zhongnanhai, the compound of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership in Beijing, are worried.

The team of rivals