COVER STORY This issue: China’s Test. The coronavirus outbreak presents the greatest threat yet to Xi Jinping’s ambition for a Chinese century. It took eight hours for a doctor to see Wu Chen’s mother after she arrived at the hospital. Eight days later, she was dead. The doctor was “99% sure” she had contracted the mysterious pneumonia-like illness sweeping China’s central city of Wuhan, Wu says, but he didn’t have the testing kit to prove it. And despite the 64-year-old’s fever and perilously low oxygen levels, there was no bed for her. Wu tried two more hospitals over the next week, but all were overrun…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

The Year of the Rat is off to an ominous start. “We just stay home and don’t go out”, says Mr. Dong. The 33-year old researcher, who provided only one name, has no other options. He, his wife and their 3-month-old daughter live in Wuhan, the epicenter of an unfolding global health crisis. They’re treating the forced time at home as a holiday, though he says, “this is different than any of them before”. Families like his huddle in their homes, fearful that if they venture out, they will get sick…

The world of finance groggily awakens to climate change. For years, climate activists have warned that a warming planet would bring devastation, disrupting not only developing countries and coastal communities but also the foundations of the global economy. Still, investors continue to pump billions of dollars into fossil fuels, governments prioritize policies to keep cheap oil flowing, and developers build on land that scientists say will soon be underwater…