Xi Jinping is head of the CCP, head of state and commander-in-chief of the military, with an indefinite period in office; he’s centralised power, increased state control of the economy and is conducting a foreign policy that leaves no doubt in the eyes of the rest of the world that China is a Great Power. By a veteran journalist on China, who also argues that Xi Jinping’s Communist party has become as rigid and autocratic as the imperial bureaucracies of the past.