Will Communist China go the way of the Soviet Union? The death of Mikhail Gorbachev is a good opportunity to examine the similarities and differences between the system that  collapsed under the last Soviet ruler and today’s China. 

Hailed in the Western press as a reformist who “ended” the Cold War, Gorbachev is widely despised by the world’s autocrats. In President Putin’s circles he is seen as the man who precipitated a “catastrophe” — the fall of the Soviet empire.

In 2012, shortly after assuming power at Beijing, President Xi made a speech that was circulated widely among Communist Party members. “All it took was one word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a great party was gone just like that,” Mr. Xi reportedly said. “In the end, nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.” 

Mr. Xi’s current alliance with Mr. Putin is no longer based on the affinity of communist parties. Instead, the disdain both leaders feel toward would-be challengers to their authoritarian rule binds them together — as does their ambition to end an America-led world order based on liberty. 

Gorbachev’s reforms, known as glasnost and perestroika, unleashed internal forces that were earlier suppressed by an onerous, bureaucratic, and oppressive system. Yet he never meant to end communism or Soviet control over the Eastern Bloc.

The USSR collapsed because the system rotted from within. The corrupt and unproductive economy was unsustainable, and the overextended Red Army was significantly weakened as it was sent to fight unwinnable wars, as in Afghanistan. 

Gorbachev’s predecessors — an aging party apparatchik’s group of dying men — tried to maintain the Kremlin’s iron fist that had kept the lid over shortcomings, which eventually came out in the open as Gorbachev attempted to save the system by reforming it. 

Beijing “took a lot of lessons from the collapse of the Soviet system, but they were the wrong lessons,” a China watcher at Human Rights Watch, Minky Worden, told the Sun. The attempt at unleashing a free economy, complete with foreign investments, even as government controls were kept intact was successful for a while. That success, though, was “due to the Chinese people, as distinct from the Communist Party,” she says.

Yet, under Mr. Xi those government controls tightened, while any semblance of a free economy died. Entrepreneurs like the Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, have been undermined: Following a mild critique of Beijing’s policies, Mr. Ma disappeared from the public eye, only to return eventually as a completely tamed version of his former, flamboyant self. 

“Nowadays researching in China is like shouting underwater — it’s all muffled,” a prominent Chinese banker and economic researcher, Hao Hong, tweeted in July, “But the longer the voices are suppressed under water, the more fierce the struggle will be, and the bigger the stir later.”

That tweet by the outspoken Mr. Hong is widely seen as the critique that finally landed him in hot water with the authorities. Considered one of the most prescient observers of China’s economy, Mr. Hong’s accounts on Weibo and other social media, where he had more than 3 million followers, were canceled.

Or perhaps it was another of Mr. Hong’s tweets, which read, “Shanghai: zero movement, zero GDP.” It followed Beijing’s complete shutdown of the city, where some of Mr. Xi’s political opponents are found. Known as the Shanghai Gang, a group led by a former Communist Party chairman, Jiang Zemin, opposes Mr. Xi’s coronation for a third five-year term as party chairman and China’s president. 

No opposing voices will be heard next month when the party launches its 20th national convention on October 16, and when Mr. Xi is “elected” to lead China for the foreseeable future. The era in which political factions within the party had their say is over. Mr. Xi has consolidated all powers in his and his cronies’ hands. 

Silencing opposing voices is rarely cost-free. Enforced shutdowns as part of Mr. Xi’s “zero Covid” policy exacerbated the slowdown in China’s growth. Pushing aside Chinese entrepreneurs and muting opinionated economists may have been even more detrimental in deepening the country’s current economic downturn. 

“Whenever the Chinese Communist party projects strength, there is an underlined weakness,” Ms. Worden says, adding that Mr. Xi’s oppression is “effective” in keeping him atop the system. 

Gorbachev, meanwhile, is “remembered as a visionary because he was not clear-sighted about socialism’s incurable systemic disease: It cannot cope with the complexity of dispersed information,” the columnist George Will wrote today, comparing the late communist leader to Christopher Columbus, who “stumbled into greatness by misunderstanding where he was going.”

A Gorbachev-like figure in Mr. Xi’s China is hard to find, as Beijing currently is adamant to suppress all “dispersed information.” But, as we seek in vain a Beijing reformist, let’s remember: If it wasn’t for Western pressure, Gorbachev’s reforms could have delayed the Soviet Union’s collapse, allowing it to survive another generation or two. 

As we seek a Chinese Gorbachev, then, perhaps we should also look for liberty-loving Western leaders in the mold of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.