Here's some of the kind of stuff I've read. Obviously it's not a straight up dictatorship, but it seems he doing his best to consolidate power.
"Xi Jinping did not initiate this transformation, but since becoming China’s president in 2013 he has made the country his own. Xi’s transformation of China began with a campaign against corruption, punishing 1.5 million officials after coming to power, including seven from the top leadership ranks (i.e., the Politburo and ministers) as well as two dozen senior generals. Two leading officials were sentenced to death. The purges and show trials served to eliminate any actual or potential opponents and to concentrate power in Xi’s own hands. They also popularized him among the Chinese people as a strongman.
Today, Xi has surpassed his goal of becoming the new Mao."
https://time.com/6211110/china-xi-jinping-world-power/
"Yet today, Xi Jinping is taking China back to a personalistic dictatorship after decades of institutionalized collective leadership. He has clearly signaled his intention to remain in office after his normal two terms end in 2022. This article analyzes the reasons why the institutional rules and precedents laid down since Deng Xiaoping’s time failed to prevent the emergence of another strongman leader like Mao Zedong."
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/china-in-xis-new-era-the-return-to-personalistic-rule/
"Chinese leader Xi Jinping is poised to take advantage of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) scheduled for this fall, and to use the idiosyncrasies of the communist regime’s top-down structure of autocratic governance to further enhance his power, panelists at a virtual hearing of a U.S. congressional advisory body said.
Over time, as corruption set in throughout the machinery of CCP rule, Xi chose to take advantage of this trend by launching a much-touted campaign against corruption whose real goal was to consolidate his own power, Fewsmith said. As part of this effort, Xi has appointed trusted followers to critical positions within the Party hierarchy and has strived to minimize the role of, and to expunge, officials associated with other factions, such as that of Jiang Zemin, who ruled China from 1993 to 2003.
Jessica Teets, a professor of political science at Middlebury College, agrees with Fewsmith about Xi’s relentless drive toward centralization. The consolidation of power continues apace under a guise of striking at the cronyism and shady dealings that have crept into the machinery of power.
Teets views the factionalism that characterized Chinese politics in the past as having dwindled, as Xi has asserted ever tighter control and awarded promotions based on personal loyalty as well as the ability to meet the regime’s targets. Visible policy disagreements within the CCP have vanished as Xi loyalists receive rewards and those who, like Sun, have a reputation for insufficient loyalty or for belonging to the wrong faction are forced out under one guise or another.
"Xi Jinping dominates the Chinese political system and is well placed to dominate the 20th Party Congress,” said another panelist, Neil Thomas, a China analyst for the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
“Xi will entrench his political leadership by installing more political allies at the top,” Thomas predicted.
Concurring with these points, Fewsmith described a political landscape in which Xi doesn’t take well to groups other than his own holding power.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/xi-ji...at-upcoming-ccp-congress-experts_4252646.html (apologies for the source but it's mostly quotes of congressional testimony)