In a celebrity culture, it’s useful to be able to put a face to what would otherwise be a shadowy menace. The Chinese get away with a ton of stuff just because they eschew the Colonel Gaddafi pillbox hat and the Saddamite turtleneck and Village People moustache and run their tyranny with a bunch of boring interchangeable guys in specs and cheap lounge suits.
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Meta
I’ve read somewhere or other (possibly in The Solution by Frances Kendall and Leon Louw) that the Swiss government tends to be similarly faceless; there was an anecdote of bumping into a harassed-looking person with an armload of papers who turned out to be the then president of the federal Cabinet.
President Xi is out to change that, and it may cost him.