[Whodathunk making an atavistic Maoist your leader would cause your country to regress?]
I’m inclined to think Xi is a Maoist in the sense that he wants the absolute emperor-like power that Mao possessed. Mao could literally have someone killed on command, for any or no reason whatsoever, although it had to be couched, as always, in terms that conveyed a sense of “more in sorrow than in anger”.