The Chinese Communist Party's secretive handling of the coronavirus could lead to its collapse in the same way that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster contributed to the Soviet Union's demise, an expert on China said Friday.

Gordon Chang said in an interview with Just The News at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Washington, D.C., that people in China are talking about Chernobyl.

The secrecy surrounding the 1986 disaster led to the failure of the Soviet Union within a half decade, he noted.

"Maybe we're starting to see the same dynamic now," he said. "But the Communist Party certainly is weakened, and it's fighting to keep itself in place."

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He said the Chinese Communist Party is "in trouble."

A number of academics in Beijing, he said, are demanding Chinese President Xi Jinping resign.

The virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, is blamed for the deaths of 2,791 people in the country. The World Health Organization said Friday that China has 78,961 confirmed cases of the virus.

"The Communist Party certainly is weakened," Chang said. "We don't know what the consequences of that will be, but we know that after the death of one of the doctors in Wuhan that tried to tell people about what was going on, that death caused white hot anger.

Nervousness about the coronavirus has contributed to the drop of the

Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq into correction territory this week.

"Xi Jinping has started to not only impose the secrecy, but he's also started to attack the United States," Chang said. "He's laying the groundwork for this notion that the U.S. can spread the coronavirus to China."