Only more transparent, liberal, open government systems can withstand criticism. The authoritarian models are always and without exception the most fragile, which is of course the exact opposite of how those systems try to project themselves to the rest of the world. You can easily tell how fragile they are, based on their tempers and thin skin when it comes to criticism.

It's unfortunate, China was on a better path. The regressive shift to Xi's authoritarian-heavy model was entirely unnecessary. It was solely done for his own glorification, and he openly pretends it was done for opposite reasons. If that were true of course, Xi wouldn't work so hard to bury Deng's legacy under his, he wouldn't be so susceptible to that intense need for vanity and idolization. Prior to Xi locking everything back down, China had slightly opened up further to internal dissent and criticism, there was far more quasi-free speech 10 and 15 years ago online in China for example than there is today. I agree with the common statement that China's culture may never choose to fully liberalize or adopt Western-style democracy, however I also think they could have easily pushed a lot further toward that direction from the stopping-point of progress where Xi began to deviate the system backwards.