Since he took over as Chinese Communist Party chief in 2012, Xi Jinping has spared no effort to entrench the monopoly on political power that the party has held since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic in 1949. With top-down decision making by “core leader” Xi, who is fresh from appointing himself a third term as leader, the party’s dominant role in ideology, society and the economy is set to deepen.