I think this is a valid observation, and I hadn't made the link yet. Legalism has been used since the very first Chinese emperors to keep the population in chec

I think this is a valid observation, and I hadn't made the link yet. Legalism has been used since the very first Chinese emperors to keep the population in check. It's a tool of oppression and arguably no place has a richer history of tools of oppression than China. Xi must be thinking "hey, it worked for millennia, why stop now?"