Reading this Fifth Plenum Communique it's really amazing that after the events of this year, contrary to most expectations, China seems to have emerged from the pandemic and related economic crisis in a stronger position than even some contrarians in this forum expected. I have had to recalibrate some of my assumptions about the durability of their authoritarian model and the extent to which people around the world will react to less visible aspects of their agenda such as their actions in Xinjiang.