Dictator

On a second thought, dictatorship and restriction of information available for the general public end up in a vicious cycle.

For those who are familiar with the Chinese history would remember the incident that Qin's First Emperor (秦始皇) burnt all books and buried a whole lot of scholars (alas, the opposition party). That's just one side of the story.

You know what. The worst dictatorship in the Imperial China was probably not the Qin, but Ming Dynasty - a time when information and new idea were under extraordinary scrutiny: No new ship were made after Zheng He (鄭和) completed his voyage, commercial activity via ports was much restricted, and students were not allowed to discuss or develop material not taught by their teacher - which was known as "師承".

With these, the voice of opposition was put to silence (almost) forever - which sustained a kind of one-man show in politics for some hundreds of years.