> Sounds like Xi Jinping is really gearing up for possible re-education of college students with communist ideals and more importantly, party loyalty.

Why should they be any different from anyone else. Look at the re-education that is happening here in the US and europe. It looks like there is a serious re-entrenchment by the major powers ( US, China, Russia, EU ) to take control over the narrative of their masses.

> Also rejection of human rights, educational freedom, and democratic ideas. Will this affect China's already low innovation capability?

What makes you think human rights, educational freedom and democratic ideas have anything to do with innovative capabilities? The most innovative peoples the last 200 years was americans. And we had slavery, jim crow and most people didn't have the right to vote. And the 200 years before that, the most innovative people were the europeans, who were living in monarchic systems and were enslaving most of the world.

> EDIT: also, there have been alot of these desperation moves by the communist party this year. From recently banning Katy Perry from performing in China because she wore a Taiwan flag in 2015, to banning Winnie the Pooh.

They always do petty things like that. Brad Pitt was banned before.

> There must be panic within the party halls regarding the economic decline.

Perhaps. But nothing you wrote indicates that they are panicked.

Why do you think the Chinese have low innovation capability? From what I hear in the news, the opposite seems to be true.

Thought exercise: China's been open for 40 years. Think of all the inventions from China in the last 40 years. Contrast that with Japan in 1990.

Does China need to go down the traditional route to innovation when everyone else volunteers it to them and installs the manufacturing means and capital into their country voluntarily?

There might even be a curious second order effect that can help cancel out the lack of independent thought through censored education, due to the increase of means from disrespecting restrictive intellectual property ideas.

I admit, I don't have intimate knowledge about their industry. But many top ML/AI practitioners have acknowledged their capabilities in this area. Besides, you seem to be putting a lot of weight on pure "inventions" whereas there is considerable value in "standing on other's shoulders" and move ahead, so to speak.

That explains why Apple and all the big Android manufacturers are basing their designs and innovations on what comes out of the Chinese phone makers, oh wait..

You mean the Japanese sharp screen xiaomi took and created a non viable product around. Oh, wait....