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This is just narrative. What things? Changing how?
It is worth noting that during Xi's reign China has changed a lot. Not in all ways for the better, but that's covered enough. They've become a high-trust society, in many respects higher-trust than the modern West. (So now we have pathetic protestations of things like safety in the streets or general politeness not counting, because it's compelled or whatever). They've doubled energy production per capita (the US has fallen a bit, while say the non-dictatorial UK has fallen off a cliff by 30% and is now far below China). They've transitioned from makers of slippers and "plastic crap" with a pathetically corrupt and infiltrated military and government to a technological superpower half a step behind the US and spooking the US into an increasingly undignified retreat from the Eastern Hemisphere. The list can go endlessly, it's arguably the most staggering timeline of national ascendance since the Industrial Revolution (if mostly by virtue of absolute scale), and of course it can be said that none of that is Xi's achievement, but he sure was well equipped to arrest those and other changes. He, however ineptly, struggled to accelerate them. Wouldn't it be easier to rule over impoverished peasants? Well, probably not. Chinese peasants sometimes used to decide they've had enough, successfully kill their emperors and usurp their thrones. "Lost the Mandate" and all that. Stupid slavish bugmen.
Taking it charitably, we know Xi was interested in Eastern mysticism and would likely love to be an Immortal Emperor. He also would opt to keep stagnant things he genuinely believes are good enough already: the "Democratic Centralism" and other buzzwords for the mechanics of the One-Party State he is lording over. That would necessitate stagnation and repression in significant aspects of culture and society, which we observe. But I'm not convinced a single immortal guy would achieve that better than an ever-regenerating hydra of government and quasi-government actors. Is there some cabal of ancient vampires maintaining American Civil Rights regime? No, they seem to keep recruiting. The Party, as O'Brien taught us, can be immortal even if the individual cell is frail. I think that's the core tragedy of our species – we have functional immortality for crude structures of power, often obfuscated in discourse by handwaving about "memes", but not for humans who, if they don't grow senile, can actually learn and acquire wisdom. Yeah, I think that even immortal dictators can be better than dictatorless dystopias, and it's too easy to build those.
Moreover, Xi said "in this century humans might be able to live to 150 years old". It sounds like he describes the opinion of scientists about the probable outlook for life extension technology, not some secret project he could realistically monopolize. Technology of this nature is, in general, hard to monopolize, and its very realization depends on scale.
I don't think we will see an immortal Ubermensch King in the East. Or at least, there will be a sizable class of lower-tier Immortals cultivating towards ascension – like in those Xianxia novels young Chinese read so much.
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