Why Xi Jinping’s Repressive Model Will Fail Like the Soviet Union

 

Xi Jinping's obsession with controlling information has blinded China’s leadership to the economic catastrophe brewing beneath falsified statistics and repressive policies.   By prioritizing autocratic control over economic transparency, Xi is steering China toward a Soviet-style collapse—where political dogma trumps economic reality.

It seems President Xi Jinping’s model for China is running more like a broken abacus than the finely tuned machine the world was once led to believe. China’s economic train, which once barreled down the tracks of progress, is now facing derailment. The truth is that China, like the old Soviet Union, is showing that autocratic rule isn’t just undemocratic—it is economically inefficient.

The hallmark of Xi’s reign has been tightening control—over the media, the internet, and increasingly, over the country’s economy. The Communist Party claims it is doing this in the name of stability and security, but, in reality, it is more like putting blinders on a horse and wondering why it is not running straight. The horse is China’s economy, and those blinders are the suppression of information and the massaging of data. Xi Jinping may want to steer the Chinese economy in a new direction, but without clear vision and honest information, he is stumbling blindly into dangerous territory.

Take China’s housing crisis, for example. Half-built houses litter the landscape, haunting reminders of how bad debt and speculative bubbles can cripple an economy. The slowing services sector, shrinking foreign investments, and record capital flight only compound the issue. Multinational companies are withdrawing their funds, while foreign analysts trim their growth forecasts for the Chinese economy. Why? Because nobody trusts the numbers anymore. It is like playing poker with a deck full of jokers—the data has been so “improved” that it has become unreliable.

This bears a striking resemblance to the Soviet Union’s demise. Under the leadership of its authoritarian rulers, the USSR was infamous for manipulating its economic data and starving its citizens of information. When the real numbers eventually came to light, it was too late—the system had already collapsed under the weight of its inefficiencies. And now China, under Xi, is marching to the same drumbeat.

In the mid-20th century, liberal economists like Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek argued that political freedom and economic success are two sides of the same coin. They observed that decentralizing power and information allows economies to grow and societies to prosper. The Soviet Union ignored this wisdom and paid the ultimate price. In their obsessive quest for control, Soviet leaders clamped down on free speech and free markets alike, stifling innovation and destroying their economy. Xi seems to have borrowed a page from that same failed playbook.

For a time, China avoided the Soviet Union’s mistakes by partially liberalizing its economy and information flow. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chinese companies freely shared financial data with foreign investors, and Chinese scientists published research globally. But now, under Xi, that window of openness is shutting rapidly. Instead of price signals guiding resource allocation, Xi Jinping Thought—a glorified homage to the leader—has found its way into monetary policy documents and even the annual reports of China’s mega-banks. The free flow of vital information is no longer valued. It’s been replaced by slogans.

An example of this is China’s deliberate manipulation of its youth unemployment figures. As the jobless rate soared, officials conveniently “improved and optimized” the numbers to present a more favorable picture. Yet, behind these doctored statistics lies a ticking time bomb. With youth unemployment skyrocketing, China's so-called “dream of rejuvenation” is beginning to look more like a nightmare. Without an honest reckoning of the scale of its problems, the country cannot hope to address them.

Xi’s admirers might argue that key decision-makers still have access to the right data. But do they? In a regime where truth is feared and dissent punished, how can anyone trust that even the highest officials are getting accurate information? Just like in the Soviet Union, where even the leadership was shielded from reality by layers of lies and censorship, China risks falling into a similar trap. No one dares to tell Xi the truth.

One of the most striking parallels to the Soviet Union is China’s obsession with national security over economic growth. Amid Xi’s intensifying repression, individuals are becoming more cautious, private debates are silenced, and academics fear they are under constant surveillance. Just like the Soviets, who prioritized political power over economic reforms, Xi seems to be sacrificing China's future on the altar of control.

Moreover, China’s current trajectory is poised to magnify its economic problems. The country is already grappling with an aging population, and its workforce is shrinking. To sustain growth, it must boost productivity. However, that requires innovation and smart investment—things that thrive in environments with open information flows, not in economies mired in secrecy. The continued investment in electric vehicles and semiconductors, for instance, looks promising on paper, but if those investments are based on distorted data, the house of cards could come crashing down.

Liberal thinkers after World War II understood the power of open societies. Information, they argued, acts like sunlight—it disinfects, illuminates, and fosters growth. Without it, shadows deepen, corruption festers, and inefficiencies multiply. China has enormous potential, but it is burdened by a leadership that views information not as a tool for progress, but as a tool for control.

The Soviet Union was notorious for its brutal control of information and its eventual collapse became a cautionary tale. China may not be on the brink of collapse just yet, but its trajectory under Xi Jinping is clear. By stifling the flow of information, the Communist Party is choking the life out of its own economy.

Perhaps Xi believes that through censorship, he can command China’s economy to grow, just as ancient emperors commanded rivers to flow. But in the end, like those emperors, Xi might learn that nature—and economics—has its own way of rebelling against autocratic dreams.