EIJING, May 12 - Only a few months ago, in what already feels like a different era, China's leaders were riding high. No one, neither critics nor partisans of the Communist Party, imagined that a viral disease was about to cause the equivalent of a national train wreck.

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Now, in just a few torturous weeks, the country's politics and international relations have changed hues. The SARS epidemic and its obvious mishandling have badly humbled China's leaders at home and abroad, and jolted the society in many ways, a range of intellectuals and party officials said in interviews.

"SARS has been our country's 9/11," Xu Zhiyuan, a columnist for the Economic Observer, a newsweekly, said in an interview. "It has forced us to pay attention to the real meaning of globalization."

"China's future seemed so dazzling," he said, and that "lulled people into thinking our country was immune from the shocks of history." A recent column he wrote about the subject was titled "Farewell to a Vacation From History."

Just where the unleashed demons will lead is uncertain. But one casualty, welcomed by some scholars, may be the smug complacency many Chinese had developed about the country's political system and future.

"I think this disaster will make China's leaders more modest," said Xiao Gongqin, a historian at Shanghai Normal University.

"Everything seemed to be going so smoothly, and that allowed us to neglect our systemic shortcomings," he said in an interview. "This crisis is forcing everyone to reflect on those shortcomings, and it will sharpen people's critical sense."

Not only is SARS a serious threat to lives, but the epidemic has also exposed with embarrassing clarity to the Chinese people and to the world -the costs of China's tight political control over information and bureaucracy.

It has thrown an equally embarrassing spotlight on the backward and disorganized state of medical care, especially in the countryside, where a majority of China's people live.

Anger overseas about the months of dissembling about the extent of SARS, which almost certainly abetted the global spread of the disease, has put Chinese leaders and diplomats on the defensive. In China, as the virus becomes more entrenched, serious economic damages are looming and Chinese travelers are in danger of becoming international pariahs.

Since the government's remarkable admission of grave mistakes on April 20, accompanied by the firing of two relatively senior officials among the many who must have known about the SARS cover-up, the top leaders have gamely worked to make up for lost time.

Hu Jintao, the president and party chief, and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, have moved visibly around the country and filled the airwaves with exhortations to defeat the epidemic, and they appear to be winning back some public faith in the process.

If nothing more, many scholars and political experts think, a new standard of public disclosure has been set.

"For the government to be so open about an ongoing crisis is unprecedented," said Li Dongmin, director of the Social Survey Institute of China. "I hope it's a step forward to a more open society."

Even in routine party meetings, people are speaking out and raising critical questions in a way they never did before, about SARS and other issues, too, said an official of a party research institute.

The epidemic and its inconsistent official handling have been "a huge shock for the entire party," the official said. "You can sense this at internal meetings, where the atmosphere has changed and people are expressing criticisms more freely."

"The SARS epidemic is forcing us to rethink the whole theoretical framework for government that was developed under Jiang Zemin," he said, including the blindered emphasis on social stability and economic growth.

"We're seeing that growth and stability need to be balanced by social development and equity," the official said.

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Now, to salvage China's reputation, as well as to protect its health, Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen have brought in highly competent technocrats, previously associated with the former prime minister, Zhu Rongji, and with economic affairs, to run the Health Ministry and Beijing's anti-SARS campaign.

Wu Yi, a deputy prime minister and former trade negotiator, has been put in overall charge of fighting SARS.

Mr. Jiang remains a political force and still seems to control the military, but his near total silence on the SARS threat and that of his prot on the Politburo have been widely noticed.

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So far the worst predictions about the spread of SARS have not come true, at least if current disease reporting is close to accurate. China reported 75 new confirmed SARS cases today, including 48 in Beijing - lower daily numbers than were being reported a week ago. To some, they were a sign of hope that the epidemic might have crested, at least in Beijing, which is now the epicenter.

But international experts warn that information on where and how the virus has spread through Beijing remains too sketchy. They are also especially worried about the danger to interior cities and provinces, where medical monitoring and care are seriously deficient.

Almost no one expects the SARS challenge alone to force basic changes in one-party rule or to end political controls on the media.

Even the new official candor, while involving an outpouring of facts, has been carefully scripted from above, and the voluminous news reports have been shaped to flatter the leaders and present a society unified in heroic struggle.

Riots in several cities and towns, by fearful populations trying to keep SARS patients out of their neighborhoods, have not been reported in the official media. Whistle-blowers who exposed the now condemned cover-up of cases and deaths have been silenced rather than officially lauded.

The most hopeful view of some party thinkers is that long-discussed proposals to allow a modest increase in press freedom, improve public oversight of officials and promote more democracy inside the ruling party will gain new strength. Others, noting how quickly the propaganda apparatus has moved to extol the leaders' performance and pre-empt any radical critiques, say that is wishful thinking.