Freedom of expression during each General Secretary's tenure

Every General Secretary since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	General Secretary	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	Hu Jintao	15 Nov 2002 – 15 Nov 2012	−5.7 points 2002 → 2012	−0.6 points/yr
2	Xi Jinping	15 Nov 2012 – now	−13.5 points 2012 → 2025	−1.0 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · China data · as of Sep 2026.