The year 2022 will be a turning point where much of the world will pivot sharply in the direction of either authoritarianism and repression or openness, and events in China will play a decisive role, said billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros at a virtual event hosted by the Hoover Institution think tank on Jan. 31. “2022 will be a critical year in the history of the world. In a few days, China, the most powerful authoritarian state, will be hosting the Winter Olympics, and like Germany in 1936, it will attempt to use the spectacle to score a propaganda victory for its system of state controls,” Soros, 91, said. Along other political contests such as the French elections and the Hungarian elections in April, and the U.S. mid-term elections in November, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) 20th Party Congress—an all-important twice-a-decade Party meeting —in October makes 2022 a year with …