“It is a bit Mao-like, keeping everyone off guard by running new national campaigns where you are breaking up trusted relationships and making people think maybe they should tell the authorities about a friend who had a conversation with a foreigner,” Michael Shoebridge, a founder of Strategic Analysis Australia and a former senior Defence Department official, tells AFR Weekend. “It seems to show that 10 years of an anti-corruption campaign to purge the Party and create it in Xi’s image has failed. Some of this is going to have a boomerang effect on his power and authority.” Posters in the...