I feel sorry for the Chinese people. That's because Xi has set the government and the country on a path that is almost guaranteed to turn out bad. Let me expla

I feel sorry for the Chinese people. That's because Xi has set the government and the country on a path that is almost guaranteed to turn out bad. Let me explain why I say that. To start, China faces many serious problems today, like poor demographic trends, massive bad debts, the trade war with the US, and the Honk Kong and Uighur crises. In order to deal with these problems, the government needs to make good decisions, and in order to do that it needs good understanding of the realities involved. Now the problem with Xi's authoritarianism is that it cuts off the sort of communication needed to find out what is going on. That includes the free expression of ordinary people, university experts, and people in the lower levels of government. All of them are constrained to be silent or say what the government wants to hear, instead of the truth of what is actually happening. As a result the higher levels of government get more and more out of touch with reality and make poorer and poorer decisions. I am guessing this will lead to some sort of collapse in the next two or three decades. For those who say no, it is not possible, just take a look at the history of China over the last century. There have been many crises and wild changes in direction, and there is no reason at all to believe that Xi has finally gotten the country on a permanently stable path. Something else. For years in the comments here at HN, when there was a negative article about China, many China defenders would say it was false, and defend China's policies and general way of government. But in the last few months, they have pretty much given doing this, and instead their main tactic is to try to divert the conversation through false equivalency claims. It seems they have realized China as it actually is can't be defended to people who are not already strong supporters.