“Legitimacy … must be in Xi Jinping’s mind,” Wang Feng, a [professor of sociology] at UC Irvine, told me. This is why, Wang explained, the government is trying to masquerade what is clearly a retreat as a shift of direction. “It is really not about giving up a policy; it is about implementing a new policy,” he said. “They want to say that they are in the driver’s seat.”

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