I'm not sure that data points to Mr. Xi succeeding.

People watch more Chinese movies, but if we look at stars given to movies, we see that Chinese movies sucks.

It seems that CCP with make it hard to view foreign movies, but people prefer them nevertheless or even more than before. Forbidden fruit at work? Or some other factor, like attempts to scale up production of movies drags quality down.

My father was a big fan of The Beatles while living in USSR. He hunted records (as vinyl so copies of copies on magnetic tapes) and listened them all the time, I still remember them all. I think that problems with acquiring records made it even more interesting for him.