China wants authoritarianism as democracy's alternative, warns former US NSA

"China has become a threat because its leaders are promoting a closed, authoritarian model as an alternative to democratic governance and free-market economics," he wrote in his article in The Atlantic.

"The Chinese Communist Party is not only strengthening an internal system that stifles human freedom and extends its authoritarian control; it is also exporting that model and leading the development of new rules and a new international order that would make the world less free and less safe. China’s effort to extend its influence is obvious in the militarization of man-made islands in the South China Sea and the deployment of military capabilities near Taiwan and in the East China Sea," he said.

"But the integrated nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s military and economic strategies is what makes it particularly dangerous to the United States and other free and open societies," he said.

He wrote the article at a time when the world is fighting the COVID-19 outbreak.

The deadly disease is believed to have originated from China.

Is Wuhan lab the epicentre of the disease?

A Nobel Prize-winning French virologist has said he believes that the COVID-19  was developed in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Wuhan is the Chinese city from where the disease is believed to have originated.

Luc Montagnier, who had won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of HIV in 2008, said the COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

"It [the virus] is of artificial origin, it is the work of molecular biologists," Montagnier said in an interview with Pourquoi docteur newspaper as quoted by Sputnik news agency.

The scientist said the Wuhan laboratory specialized in these coronaviruses since the early 2000s and its employees had expertise in this area.

The reports that the virus originated in the so-called wet market in China is "a beautiful legend," as COVID-19 was developed in the laboratory, he was quoted as saying.