Chinese historian: Xi Jinping a master of "neo-authoritarianism"

The president of China, Xi Jinping, has admitted to watching “The Godfather,” and this week he proved he could be a shrewd student of one of that film’s themes: the art of amassing and applying power in a small, secretive circle of men....

Xiao Gongqin, one of China’s most prominent proponents of “neo-authoritarianism,” thinks Mr. Xi is very a good thing: a new incarnation of his idea of a model leader, Deng Xiaoping.

Professor Xiao, who teaches history at Shanghai Normal University, attracted fame, and controversy, in the late 1980s for arguing that China needed a pro-market strongman to extinguish political opposition while shepherding the country into economic modernity. Mr. Xi absorbed that “neo-authoritarian” idea by consciously imitating Mr. Deng, the party patriarch who oversaw the economic reforms of the 1980s, Professor Xiao said in a telephone interview....