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I think this is a little charitable to Xi. By obvious comparison, I don't think many would deny that Mao really was a true believer in communism and in rooting out the bourgeoisie and rightists. At the same time, he grew increasingly comfortable in wielding purges against internal enemies and critics and the more he purged the more his circle of enemies and critics grew in his mind. There were a great many long time comrades and allies that ended up targets of Mao's paranoia.
In fairness to Xi, there's no evidence that he is inflicted with the madness that Mao most likely had in his later years, but I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that as he becomes more comfortable wielding purges as a weapon, he would be increasingly inclined to use them for even minor slights and disagreements. He can be both a true believer in anti-corruption and still use that as an excuse to get rid of people that were once close to him. I'd be stunned if most of his inner circle weren't already guilty of corruption in some small ways, given how endemic it was to the CCP for so many years. Especially an elder like Zhang.
I think late Mao was driven primarily not by [greater than usual] paranoia, but by a fairly reasonable belief that after his profoundly disastrous Great Leap Forward his throne grew shaky and he could only stay in power until death by getting everyone bogged down in bloody chaos, riding the tiger, so to speak. It is also likely that he genuinely believed that another round of social engineering is in order, thus «continuous revolution».
We do not see Xi acting weirdly or doing anything extravagant in any other domain. There's no tightening of censorship, no incomprehensible economic stratagems, the diplomacy is predictable and reactive, what we hear of the 15th 5-year plan is business as usual, Jack Ma is forgiven, most campaigns (against sissy men, tutoring, quantitative trading, whatever) are toned down, the recent exercises around Taiwan were roughly identical in scope and nature to the exercises in 2022, 2023, 2024. He's specifically purging the military brass, for whatever reason.
Even before the cultural revolution Mao had strategies to weed out any opposition like his 100 flowers campaign. I'd have to check my books but I'm fairly certain there were quite a few close allies caught in some of his early purges as well.
That being said, you're right that comparisons between Mao and Xi end at both being heads of the CCP. Despite my earlier statement, Xi is not a top down dictator the way Mao was. The current CCP is too large, too complex for it ever to be controlled by the whim of one man. Mao's CCP was large, but it really could be said that everything came down from the top; hence many of the more idiotic decisions. The innumerable technocrats can keep the engine of China running even if Xi was suddenly inflicted with the madness of Nero.
If there is a comparison for Xi, it's the Chinese emperors. Perhaps a one of the Qing, who wielded great empires but we're at a loss for the minutiae of the far reaches. In the first opium war, China was pretty easily beaten by a relatively tiny expeditionary force from Britain simply because the emperor never had a handle on what was happening and his delegated generals ended up in petty squabbles. So this example might reinforce the notion that Xi is trying to purge 'incompetence' rather than 'corruption' or 'opposition'.
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