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In 2018, Kerry Brown wrote “Will Xi Jinping Tighten His Grip on Power in 2019?” where he argued that the atmosphere in China has become increasingly dominated by President Xi, indicative of his ever-increasing political influence. In the wake of a pandemic that shook China, as well as the rest of the world, we invited Kerry back to reflect on his article.Read more below.In your 2018 article, “Will Xi Jinping Tighten His Grip on Power in 2019?” you said you were skeptical about how to interpret the level of power General Secretary Xi holds in China. How, if at all, has your view on how he has been able to maintain such authority changed over the past five years?The last five years have been wholly overshadowed by the pandemic that broke out in late 2019 in China and then rapidly spread across the world. That has meant that new forms of social control came into existence in China (and elsewhere), allowing more surveillance of people and more social organization. That has necessarily impacted both the ways that the Chinese Communist Party governs and the kind of leadership Xi enjoys, having headed it for over 12 years. But while the pandemic did give this new capacity to control and exercise power, it also exposed the limits of that, even for Xi. The demonstrations against the lockdowns being imposed in late 2022 in cities like Shanghai and Xian exposed real vulnerabilities and dissent amongst the public, and showed that the party was willing to act quickly to prevent these from escalating. Within a matter of weeks, the vast majority of restrictions were lifted. And the pandemic has left a residual resentment against how the pandemic arose, and how it was handled, amongst the Chinese — along with economic challenges that continue to