It was hard to miss on the first of July this year: the Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrated its 100^th birthday. A huge crowd of − staged or real, who knows? − Party enthusiasts celebrated on Tiananmen Square in Beijing while Xi Jinping, China’s president, summed up the Party’s achievements during a one-hour long speech. His message was clear: without the Party, China would not be where it is today. The centenary is a crucial milestone in the narrative that the CPC has promoted ever since it came to power in 1949. The Party’s actual story has been more mixed and, as we have seen in part one (The Pledge) and part two (The Turn), includes a number of unanticipated, dramatic twists. Our third and final act, The Prestige, captures the rise of Xi Jinping who over the course of the past decade has steered the country into an eerily familiar direction.