Xi saw the world very differently from the bland apparatchik he replaced. To Xi, the party was tottering on the brink of collapse, hobbled by corruption and the influx of Western ideas such as press freedom and rule of law. Xi didn’t want to be China’s Gorbachev and preside over the demise of the Communist Party. Only days into his rule, he gave a speech chastising the Soviet party’s collapse in 1991, blaming it on the fact that “nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.” Xi jailed human rights defenders and feminists. China’s free-for-all social media platforms were reined in by
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