This difficulty in deciphering what the party wants, beyond the goals explicitly laid out in the public speeches of its leaders, is once again compounded by the purpose-built opacity of the Chinese political system. Indeed, the system is designed to keep prying foreign eyes as far away as possible from the actual core of Chinese leadership processes, including those factors that ultimately drive its political decisions. In part, this comes from the perceived need to present absolute unity of purpose at all times and a fear that if anyone discovers that the CCP’s internal processes are much
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