The Chairman of Everything

Overall, conditions for civil society are worse in China today than they have been for more than two decades. The swing back toward repression, which began around the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was fueled by the curious and combustible mix of elite self-confidence and elite skittishness. It has picked up steam under Xi Jinping’s rule. In spite of ratcheted up forms of control, protests continue. A sense of the system’s fragility remains, even though there is no organized opposition, and no movement since 1989 has emerged to link people with the most commonly shared grievances, which now include old ones such as disgust with corruption, as well as newer ones such as anxiety about their children growing up breathing toxic fumes.