BEIJING • Detractors and doomsayers assert that China's one-party authoritarian state is the root of most of the country's problems and a recipe for disaster, likening the ongoing coronavirus epidemic to China's Chernobyl.
Rapid economic growth witnessed in the past four decades is no longer sustainable. Collapse is inevitable unless the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cushions its authoritarian ways - an obsession with secrecy, a culture of cover-ups, a penchant for playing up good news and playing down the bad, censorship of traditional and social media, growing intolerance for free speech and press, civil society and dissent, and a lack of viable checks and balances.
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