The Chinese Communist Party has long wielded perhaps the world’s most sweeping surveillance apparatus against activists and others who might possibly voice discontent.

Then, during the coronavirus pandemic,
the surveillance reached an unprecedented scale,
tracking virtually every urban resident in the name of preventing infections.

Now, it is clear that Mr. Xi wants to make that expanded control permanent, and to push it even further.

The goal is no longer just to address specific threats, such as the virus or dissidents.

It is to embed the party so deeply in daily life that no trouble, no matter how seemingly minor or apolitical, can even arise.

Mr. Xi has branded this effort the “Fengqiao experience for a new era.”

“#Fengqiao” refers to a town where, during the Mao era, the party encouraged residents to
“re-educate” purported political enemies,
through so-called struggle sessions
where people were publicly insulted and humiliated
until they admitted crimes such as writing anti-communist poetry.

Mr. Xi, who invokes Fengqiao regularly in major speeches,
has not called for a revival of struggle sessions, in which supposed offenders were sometimes beaten or tortured.

But the idea is the same:
harnessing ordinary people alongside the police to suppress any challenges to the party and uphold the party’s legitimacy

The Beijing suburb in the propaganda video, Zhangjiawan, was recently recognized in state media as a national exemplar of the approach.