The old Ancient Chinese System has flaws and merit, otherwise China won't survive through out thousands of years, and we still speak Chinese, write Chinese, every Chinese can read all the Chinese book which was written back to 2000 years ago. While the Egypt can not say that, the Indians can't read Sanskrit.
The Chairman Mao era is controversial, we made progress, and mistakes, all in all we built the backbone of the country and played well in Cold War.
The Deng Xiaoping era took the lesson from Chairman Mao, reform and bring in fresh blood, the young replaced the revolutionaries.
Now it's Xi, we took back some of the merit of Chairman Mao's policy, and centralized more power to push forward, new policies were made, and those establishment who protect their illegal interests locked up.
Since Deng Xiaoping, there was no one who can make decision like Chairman Mao. It's shared power in
the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
In Xi's era, he grab more power to fight against corruption, and the decision is still made in
the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
The Politburo of the Communist Party of China is the key to understand China political system.
Yes, ordinary Chinese gave up some rights, but it's collective decision making process. Issues, ideas, solutions were collected from the bottom to top, on different level.
It's a little hard to understand in the context of western political environment and theory.