First a few of a caveats. I do NOT have any access to privileged or classified information. I am going solely from my education and training. I am seeing A LOT of things going on in the PRC that have my mental alarms blaring.
1. Corruption in China has, historically, been high. This long predates the CCP & PRC. That said, many CCP officials, at all levels, have elevated this to a point where they make the Bidens look like cheaters in a penny-ante poker game.
As I said, this is nothing new. What is new is that I am seeing reports of this in the news. If it is bad enough to make the Chinese news for me to see it in the US then it is bad. That the CCP hasn't crushed the reports means that it is REALLY bad.
The proximate news report is that of officials of the Chinese Red Cross inflating and falsifying donations and diverting flood relief donations to their personal benefit. Nothing new there but the level of it is shocking to the Chinese.
2. The damage from typhoon Doksuri in late July is both ongoing and far worse than I had believed. The Wangjiayuan reservoir in Changping, Beijing, recorded a staggering precipitation accumulation of 744.8mm (29.32 in) over a 72 hour period. This exceeded the previous record of 609mm (23.97 in) set in 1891.
In an effort to protect Beijing (~21.7 million in 2023) and other large cities on the north China plain, water has been diverted into farmland upstream of Beijing. The local CCP officials claim that they had nothing to do with this but the locals aren't buying the excuses any more.
This is on top of the flood divergence in the Yangtze basin. That almost turned Shanghai into an island.
Things were so bad that despite all the water divergence actions that parts of the Forbidden City flooded. This is significant because the FC is built on top of an an extensive drainage system. Now add June snows in NE China.
Despite the best efforts of the CCP to root it out, there remains a strong superstitious streak in Chinese society. Events such as this are seen as a sign of Heaven's displeasure with the current government/ dynasty. Smaller things than this have toppled provincial and national governments.
3. The Chinese economy was already hurting before Doksuri showed up.
3a. The PRC has an ongoing housing slump that makes the 2008 US housing bubble crash look like a raging bull market. In the US, housing accounts for 15-18% of GDP. In the PRC it is ~30%. People in the PRC do not buy houses/ apartments the way we do. Unless it is a custom construction we buy finished products. In China you take out a loan, pay the builder, begin making loan payments, and wait a year or three for the unit to be built, if it gets built.
Then there is the matter of what the Chinese call "Tofu Dreg" construction. It is far worse than it sounds. Imagine support pillars in a high-rise where you can crumble and remove the concrete with your bare hands or the cladding blowing off the sides of your building in a strong wind, or your building starting to lean because the foundation wasn't prepared properly. 
There are cities like this throughout the PRC. The buildings are there but there is no infrastructure to make them habitable.
3b. There are signs of deflation in the Chinese economy. In a functioning economy sharp, short bouts of deflation, while painful, are generally a good thing as they correct imbalances in the economy. This is not true of long term creeping deflation which is what I am seeing in the PRC. Slow, long term deflation is like being in the outer edges of whirlpool in a row boat with only one oar and two broken arms.
This is the state of the PRC economy.
1. They are in the middle of a demographic collapse with a rapidly aging population. The PRC is the fastest aging population in world history. The average Chinese became older than the average American about 2010. A birthrate of 2.1 children per woman is necessary for a stable population. It currently sits at about 0.7 in urban China. This forecasts crashing internal demand in the near to mid future.
2. Wage rises over the past ten years have made them noncompetitive with other Asian countries for the same type of work. This has lead to an unemployment level higher than Italy which has one of the highest in the EU.
3. When polled, young Chinese are not interested in factory work. They want knowledge based work. The nature of the CCP and hence the education system mitigates against producing people capable of this.
4. Both foreign and Chinese companies are desperately trying to get assets out of the PRC. See reasons 1, 2, & 3 above.
All of this feeds back on itself creating the whirlpool I cited above.
That's enough for now.
WWG1WGA
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)