Fiscal mismanagement, exacerbated by the growing authoritarian tendencies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is quickly undoing economic and social progress and setting the stage for soaring poverty and social unrest throughout China, said experts at a Hudson Institute virtual event on Jan. 11. The virtual event, “Is China Headed for an Economic Crisis?”, featured Thomas Duesterberg, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, and Leland Miller, CEO of China Beige Book International. Looking at China today, Duesterberg outlined a number of festering ills that the CCP in recent years has proven singularly ill-equipped to address. One of the biggest looming problems has to do with the country’s demographics. China has what Duesterberg called a severely aging population, in which the number of working-age men and women is expected to decline sharply as a total percentage of the citizenry in coming years. By 2050, Duesterberg predicted, half …