THE BACKGROUND: After beginning 2022 by hosting a Winter Olympics inside a COVID bubble, China faced a tough year. It was filled with economic challenges, maintaining and then loosening its zero-COVID policy, fending off claims of human rights abuses and — in the latter part of 2022 — dealing with unusual and widespread protests related to its approach to the pandemic.
The world's most populous nation also tried to balance its unease about the Ukraine war and other nations' overt interventionism with maintaining its ties to Russia, Europe and the United States. Perhaps most significantly in the long term, it held a Communist Party congress that ended with Xi Jinping securing another term as leader, even as a previous top leader died and his era of China faded into history.
