‘Moving Backward’: In Xi’s China, Some See an Era of Total Control

A decade ago, many prominent Chinese hoped that Xi Jinping would usher in openness and reform. Today, some of them believe he has created a totalitarian state.

As Xi Jinping was preparing to take the helm of the Chinese Communist Party a decade ago, a great number of China’s political, business and intellectual elites were hopeful that he would make their country more open, just and prosperous.

Mr. Xi’s speech at the opening of the 20th party congress on Sunday made it clearer than ever that China is moving in the opposite direction from liberalization. Obsessed with national security, he is more focused on quashing all ideological and geopolitical challenges than on reform and opening up, the policies that brought China out of poverty.

He used the term “new era” 39 times in his speech, boasting of the party’s achievements under his leadership. But for some Chinese, it has been a dark era — a shift away from a system that, while authoritarian, tolerated private enterprise and some diversity in public opinion to one that now espouses a single ideology and a single leader.

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