The Communist Party of China has, for a brief and fragile moment, transported a city of twenty million people back to a simpler time. It is an exercise in sheer, unrelenting will—physical and mental. This extraordinary production is all to ensure the smooth success of the Eighteenth Party Congress, a period of barely a week, ending this Thursday, when thousands of loyal delegates converge on Beijing to cheer the début of the small, unelected group of men who will run the country for the next ten years. Even to those of us accustomed to the Party’s attention to detail, the effects have been astonishing.

Continue reading “The Communist Party Goes Kodachrome,” by Evan Osnos.