Elimination of Rivals
Perhaps no authoritarian technique has proven more effective than systematically removing political rivals before they become genuine threats. Stalin perfected this approach during the Great Terror, using fabricated conspiracies, show trials, forced confessions, and executions to eliminate former allies, military leaders, and anyone suspected of challenging his authority. Even long-time Bolsheviks who had helped bring the Soviet Union into existence were eventually imprisoned or executed. HISTORY.com notes that by the end of the Great Terror, roughly one third of the Communist Party’s members had been purged, while virtually every prominent rival had disappeared.
Mao employed similar tactics throughout his rule, though often through political campaigns rather than formal judicial proceedings. The Hundred Flowers Campaign provides one of the clearest examples. Mao initially encouraged intellectuals to criticize the Communist Party, promising that “a hundred flowers bloom.” When criticism proved more extensive than expected, he abruptly reversed course and launched the Anti Rightist Campaign. Thousands who had accepted his invitation to speak openly found themselves labeled enemies of the state, losing their positions, their freedom, or worse. The campaign became a lasting warning that criticism of the Party, even when invited, could carry devastating consequences.
Xi has modernized this strategy by placing anti corruption investigations at the center of political discipline. Since taking power in 2012, millions of officials have been investigated or punished at various levels of government. Unlike Mao and Stalin, Xi generally avoids public executions or mass imprisonment of ordinary citizens. Instead, officials disappear into disciplinary investigations, are expelled from the Communist Party, publicly confess wrongdoing, lose their positions, or face lengthy prison sentences.
What makes Xi’s system particularly effective is its unpredictability. Even officials personally promoted by Xi have later become targets. Senior Politburo members, cabinet ministers, military commanders, financial regulators, and executives of major state enterprises have all fallen. According to reporting included in the supplied material, nearly one million officials were disciplined during 2025 alone, while a U.S. intelligence assessment stated that nearly five million officials have been found guilty of bribery since Xi assumed power.
This constant uncertainty discourages the formation of organized opposition inside the Communist Party. Officials understand that political survival depends not only on competence but on remaining unquestionably loyal to Xi’s leadership. The lesson resembles Stalin’s approach in one important respect: today’s loyal supporter may become tomorrow’s accused traitor.
Removal of Institutional Limits
One of the most significant differences between Xi Jinping and his immediate predecessors is his systematic dismantling of institutional safeguards designed after Mao’s death.
Following the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping concluded that concentrating unlimited authority in a single leader created dangerous instability. Although Deng himself remained extraordinarily powerful, he encouraged retirement norms, orderly succession planning, age limits for senior officials, and presidential term limits to reduce the risk of another lifelong ruler dominating Chinese politics.
Xi has steadily reversed many of these reforms. During his first decade in power, he discarded long standing retirement practices, concentrated authority over major policy decisions into his own hands, and oversaw the removal of China’s two term presidential limit. These changes effectively opened the door for him to remain China’s paramount leader indefinitely.
Equally significant is what Xi has not done. Unlike previous generations of Chinese leadership, he has not elevated an obvious successor capable of assuming power. Analysts note that members of Xi’s inner circle tend to be older loyalists who are unlikely to become future national leaders. This absence of succession planning recalls both Mao and Stalin, whose deaths produced intense struggles for power that reshaped their countries after they were gone.
Brookings scholar Joseph Torigian notes that Xi has deliberately formalized his authority to a degree not seen since Mao. While Deng preferred exercising enormous influence behind the scenes, Xi has increasingly concentrated both formal authority and practical decision making in his own office. Major issues ranging from economic planning to national security increasingly flow through institutions under Xi’s direct supervision.
The practical consequence is that fewer independent voices participate in national decision making. Outside experts, lower level officials, and even government agencies reportedly have less influence over major policy documents than in previous decades. Analysts argue this concentration of authority makes policy mistakes more difficult to identify and correct because fewer officials are willing to challenge decisions originating from the top.
Fear as Governance
Fear has long been one of the most effective tools available to authoritarian governments.
During Stalin’s Great Terror, virtually no citizen could feel completely safe. Political officials, military officers, artists, scientists, teachers, farmers, and ordinary workers all understood that accusations alone could lead to arrest, forced confession, imprisonment, or execution. HISTORY.com summarizes the atmosphere simply: “Essentially, no one was safe from danger.” The resulting climate of uncertainty discouraged criticism because almost any action could be interpreted as disloyalty.
Mao similarly relied upon recurring political campaigns to generate fear throughout Chinese society. During the Cultural Revolution, neighbors informed on neighbors, students denounced teachers, and families were torn apart by accusations of political disloyalty. The Anti Rightist Campaign demonstrated that even following Mao’s invitation to criticize the Party could become evidence of counterrevolutionary thinking once political winds shifted.
Xi governs through a different but equally calculated form of fear. Rather than relying primarily on public violence, he has institutionalized uncertainty through relentless disciplinary inspections, anti corruption investigations, internal criticism sessions, and continuous monitoring of officials. The possibility of investigation hangs over every level of government.
The consequences extend beyond those actually punished. Officials increasingly become reluctant to make independent decisions for fear that mistakes, policy disagreements, or even perceived hesitation could trigger disciplinary action. Reporting cited in the supplied material notes that the Chinese government itself has acknowledged growing bureaucratic inertia resulting from the pressure created by Xi’s campaigns.
Political scientist Guoguang Wu argues that Stalin, Mao, and Xi all display a similar rational approach to consolidating authority. As he observed, “They are certainly ruthless. There are no emotional factors in their calculations.” Fear is not merely a byproduct of governance. It becomes one of its primary instruments.
Modern Surveillance Replacing Mass Terror
The area in which Xi has departed most dramatically from both Mao and Stalin is the use of technology.
Neither twentieth century dictator possessed the digital capabilities available to today’s Chinese government. Mao depended heavily upon mass mobilization through Red Guards, neighborhood committees, and political campaigns. Stalin relied on secret police networks, informants, extensive files, and widespread arrests. Both systems required enormous numbers of people to monitor one another.
Xi has supplemented many of these traditional methods with sophisticated surveillance technologies that extend government oversight into nearly every aspect of daily life.
China has built what many observers describe as the world’s largest surveillance network, combining hundreds of millions of cameras, facial recognition systems, centralized databases, artificial intelligence, and digital monitoring. Existing systems such as Skynet and Sharp Eyes already provide authorities with extraordinary visibility into public activity.
According to recent reporting summarized in the supplied material, the next stage goes even further. Chinese authorities are increasingly deploying predictive policing systems designed not merely to observe behavior but to anticipate future risks. Advanced artificial intelligence analyzes enormous quantities of video, digital information, and local reports in an effort to identify individuals who authorities believe might participate in protests, public unrest, or other activities viewed as threatening.
This marks an important evolution in authoritarian governance. Mao and Stalin generally punished people after accusations emerged. Xi’s technology increasingly seeks to identify potential dissent before organized opposition even develops.
Researchers also describe expanding efforts to evaluate emotional states, behavioral patterns, and community sentiment using artificial intelligence. Rather than depending primarily upon fear generated through spectacular acts of violence, Xi’s government increasingly relies upon the quiet but constant awareness that citizens may be watched, analyzed, categorized, and monitored almost continuously.
The result is a form of social control that many analysts believe is more sustainable than the periodic campaigns employed by Mao or the mass executions associated with Stalin. Modern technology allows the state to suppress opposition with greater precision while avoiding much of the visible chaos that accompanied earlier authoritarian systems.
History rarely repeats itself exactly, but it often evolves. Xi Jinping has not attempted to recreate either Stalin’s Great Terror or Mao’s Cultural Revolution in their original forms. China today is governed through bureaucracy, technology, centralized party institutions, and sophisticated surveillance rather than mass revolutionary violence.
Yet the underlying political principles remain remarkably familiar. Like Stalin and Mao, Xi has cultivated a personality cult, demanded absolute loyalty, eliminated rivals, centralized military authority, dismantled institutional safeguards, and created an atmosphere in which fear discourages independent thought. Where his predecessors relied upon executions, labor camps, and public denunciations, Xi increasingly relies upon disciplinary investigations, digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, and predictive policing.
Perhaps this is Xi’s greatest innovation. Rather than abandoning the authoritarian playbook developed by Stalin and Mao, he has modernized it. The objective remains the same: preserve the Communist Party’s monopoly on power by ensuring that organized dissent never has an opportunity to take root. The methods, however, have been adapted for the digital age, creating a system that many analysts believe is more technologically sophisticated, more centralized, and in some respects more pervasive than anything either Stalin or Mao could have imagined.