institutions. when they began china's reforms the phrase that was used to often that it became a mantra was reform and opening. that opening feels like a distant memory now. today it's crack down and close up. in some ways covid highlights a central flaw in the chinese model. beijing can operate with ruthless efficiency which often makes western democratic policy making seem chaotic and second rate, but when a dictator's chosen policy needs to be changed, it's very hard for a dictatorship to correct course. the best example of this rigidity is china's one child policy which gained momentum in the 1980s. a strategy that might have made some sense in the '60s and early '# 0s when chinese population growth was worrying and the economy was faltering, proved count productive from the 1990s