When considering China's turn, here's one underlooked moment to consider: the box office failure of Lei Feng movies in 2013, when two moderately prominent films about the Maoist idol did absolutely pathetic box office. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/766438.shtml

Why is this important? Because this failure came *despite* high level orders from what was then SARFT (now the NRTA, briefly SAPPRFT) to promote the films, and because *Chinese media, including state media* openly made fun of the failure.

That year sees a massive tightening of film censorship and 'patriotic promotion,' and I believe that the failure of those films seriously contributed to the sense of Xi and his leadership contemporaries that they were losing the cultural/ideological war to U.S. influence.

Now, of course, those moves were probably coming anyway. I highlight this mostly to get across a key point: the Chinese leadership was *very worried it was losing that struggle* by 2012-2013.

that cultural/ideological insecurity is really key, I think, to understanding a lot of domestic Xi-ism.