I’m puzzled that Xi keeps feeling the need to tighten political restrictions around society. Controls on free expression are stronger than they have been in decades. As I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.

I think there might be some apprehension about people starting to question if there ought to be more than one political party, although I don’t follow Chinese politics or society closely. No particular news really.