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China's Challenges
President Xi Jinping intends to use the Beijing Winter Olympics as an opportunity to tout the superiority of his model of authoritarian rule. But the regime's careful preparations have required covering up problems that can no longer be obscured.
STANFORD – The year 2022 will be a critical one in the history of the world. In a few days, China – the world’s most powerful authoritarian state – will begin hosting the Winter Olympics, and, like Germany in 1936, it will attempt to use the spectacle to score a propaganda victory for its system of strict controls.