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       China Wants to Look Open. Under the Surface, Xi’s Grip is Clear.

       At China’s big political show, nervous exchanges with journalists and the tightly scripted pageantry showed how Xi Jinping has centralized control.

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       The National People’s Congress, the most important spectacle on China’s political calendar, opened on Tuesday. Credit...Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

       By Vivian Wang

       Reporting from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

       March 5, 2024Updated 10:55 p.m. ET

       Finally, it appeared, things were back to normal.

       As nearly 3,000 delegates filed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Tuesday for the opening of China’s annual legislative meeting, none wore face masks. Officials pressed together to shake hands and pose for photos. Around them, reporters and diplomats from around the world milled about the cavernous lobby, many invited back for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic four years earlier.

       It was one of China’s highest-profile political stages, and the message being sent was clear: The country’s prolonged isolation was over, and it was once more open to the world and ready for business.

       But normal in today’s China has a different meaning than before. And beneath the veneer of openness were signs of how much China has changed in the past four years, becoming more insular, more regimented, more tightly bound to the one-person rule of its top leader, Xi Jinping.

       To be allowed into the Great Hall, where China’s most important political meetings take place, attendees still had to take a government-arranged Covid test. Unlike in previous years, when a report containing the government’s annual economic growth target was made public at the start of the opening ceremony, this year it was initially shared only with delegates and diplomats.

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       The opening of the annual legislative session, a carefully choreographed event at which top leaders make speeches and delegates rubber-stamp new policy. Credit...Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

       In perhaps the biggest departure from previous years, officials announced that China’s premier, the country’s No. 2 official, would no longer take questions at the end of the weeklong legislative session. It was the end of a three-decades-long tradition, one of the few opportunities for journalists to interact with a top leader.

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       Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people. More about Vivian Wang

       A version of this article appears in print on March 6, 2024, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Under a Veneer of Openness, China Reboots Its Big Political Meeting . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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