Media outlets were saturated last week with coverage of the 14th Congress of the Communist Party, an event described as “the most momentous for the country” and a “historic turning point.” It earns these labels because it will determine the fate of more than 100 million people, shaping the country’s economic, political, and social future for at least the next decade.

Despite oft-repeated declarations of a “democratic, law-based state” and slogans asserting that “the people know, the people discuss,” or “the people inspect and supervise,” the Congress’s deliberations are taking place behind closed doors, inaccessible even to the press.