Another China expert accepts the unpleasant truth of China's trajectory towards deepening totalitarianism at home and abroad. The author goes into sufficient detail to show the clear linkage of how Xi's ideology deliberately aligns with Stalin, and why Xi thinks deviating from it would pose an existential threat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The language in the previous posts describe how Xi leverages technology to revitalize Mao's Mass Line concept, and condition people to think along party lines. As the author in the article points out, ideology is the critical component of Mao's, and now Xi's totalitarianism.

Mao’s discursive advantage was Marxist-Leninist ideology. Language was not just a tool of moral judgment. It was an instrument for shaping acceptable behaviour and a weapon for distinguishing enemies and friends. This is the subtext of Mao’s most famous poem, Snow. Communist ideology enabled him to “weaponise” culture in a way his imperial predecessors had never managed.
https://nb.sinocism.com/p/engineers-...ul-ideology-in

Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping's China by John Garnaut

Some now say he has become a China hawk, but I see it as more the evolution of a sophisticated China watcher who believes in seeking truth from facts, no matter how difficult it may be to accept the reality of the direction Xi and the CCP appear to be taking China. This is a trajectory I have found myself on, along with many of the most experienced foreign China watchers I know.
Stalin described artists and authors as "engineers of the human soul." They simply served for promoting the party and its views. In other words, art and writing was purely propaganda intended to as means to facilitate cultural and ideological security.

Xi uses the same ideological template to describe the role of “media workers”. And school teachers. And university scholars. They are all engineers of ideological conformity and cogs in the revolutionary machine.

Among the many things that China’s modern leaders did – including overseeing the greatest burst of market liberalisation and poverty alleviation the world has ever seen – those who won the internal political battles have retained the totalitarian aspiration of engineering the human soul in order to lead them towards the ever-receding and ever-changing utopian destination.
Combine the findings in this article, with the insights from the previous article, "The CCP Vision and Future of Chinese History," you'll gain a greater appreciation of incidious threat the CCP poses.