China’s big political show is back to normal. Kind of.

Finally it seemed like everything was back to normal.

As nearly 3,000 delegates filed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Tuesday for the opening of China’s annual legislative assembly, no one wore a face mask. Officials crowded together to shake hands and pose for photos. Around them, reporters and diplomats from around the world milled around the cavernous lobby, many invited for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic four years earlier.

It was one of China’s most prominent political stages, and the message sent was clear: the country’s long isolation was over, the country was once again open to the world and ready for business.

But normal has a different meaning in today’s China than before. And beneath the veneer of openness were signs of how much China has changed in the past four years: It is more insular, more disciplined and more closely tied to the one-man rule of its top leader, Xi Jinping.

To gain access to the Great Hall, where China’s most important political meetings take place, attendees still had to take a government-arranged Covid test. Unlike previous years, when a report detailing the government’s annual economic growth target was made public at the start of the opening ceremony, this year it was initially shared only with delegates and diplomats.

In perhaps the biggest departure from previous years, officials announced that China’s premier, the country’s No. 2 official, would no longer answer questions at the end of the weeklong legislative session. It was the end of a three-decade tradition, one of the few opportunities for journalists to interact with a top leader.

“That’s where the prime minister’s press conference used to be,” a Chinese man in a suit pointed out to another in a low voice on Tuesday as they walked through the room.

Guides with that kind of insider knowledge are important at Chinese political events like this, where the events are so tightly choreographed that a casual observer might not know that things haven’t always been this way.

At 9 a.m., as a light sleet fell outside, dozens of delegates sat in neat rows on the stage, against a backdrop of towering red curtains. Together with the other delegates sitting below them, they sang the national anthem.

When the Prime Minister, Li Qiang, then took the stage to give his summary of the government’s achievements over the past year, they dutifully pored over their paper copies of his report. This year, reporters did not receive copies of the report until halfway through Mr. Li’s speech.

Above the stage, the venue’s expansive balconies were filled with Chinese and foreign journalists positioning cameras, taking notes and peering through binoculars at the officials far below.

But many of the foreign journalists were only allowed into the country on temporary visas because China has been slow to issue or deny long-term visas to many Western news organizations. In 2020, many American journalists were deported, and last year even some foreign journalists with valid long-term visas were not allowed into the legislature.

In Mr. Li’s nearly hour-long speech, he repeatedly paid tribute to Mr. Xi, who sat in the center of the second row. Mr. Xi, unlike everyone else on stage, barely touched his copy of the work report. Every now and then he sipped from one of the two teacups ready for him. (For most of his early years in power, Mr. Xi had just one cup at the opening ceremony, as did the other delegates. But in recent years, Mr. Xi, who has steadily consolidated power around him, has had two had.)

Mr Li acknowledged the challenges China faces, including a debt-laden real estate sector and weak consumer demand. This is all part of why China is now so keen to project openness, as it seeks to attract foreign investors and reassure domestic entrepreneurs.

“We must communicate the policy to the public in a targeted manner to create a stable, transparent and predictable policy environment,” Mr Li said.

But you only had to step outside the room to see why many are suspicious of such promises. Information about and from the government has become increasingly limited as China has expanded its definition of espionage to include even routine interactions with foreigners as potentially dangerous. Restrictions on both the Chinese and foreign press have been tightened.

Days before the opening ceremony, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China said a journalist from Dutch broadcaster NOS was pushed to the ground by police officers in a city in southwestern China while interviewing people there; so was the incident captured on camera. In the days before the rallies, police cars with flashing lights regularly appeared on street corners across Beijing, and volunteers wearing red armbands kept watch for potential troublemakers.

On Tuesday, officials had organized a series of question-and-answer sessions with a number of pre-selected deputies and ministers — sessions that, officials said, helped justify the cancellation of the prime minister’s traditional press conference. In the lobby of the Great Hall, these officials answered carefully worded questions from state media on topics such as how Chinese-made cars could be promoted abroad and how the Chinese people had benefited from government investments in water conservation infrastructure.

One of the elected delegates came from Henan province, home to a major archaeological site called Yinxu. When he had to ask a question, a reporter from a Communist Party newspaper asked him, “Recently, Yinxu’s achievements in archeology have attracted a lot of attention. Do you have any special feelings about the protection of cultural artifacts?”

Outside this carefully curated context, attempts to interview delegates were far less successful. Several officials, approached as they entered or left the chamber, refused to answer even simple questions, such as whether they had introduced legislative proposals this year, or even where they were from.

A typical conversation with a delegate whose name tag identified him as Wang Wenqiang, from Hebei Province, went as follows:

“Excuse me, have you made any proposals this year?”

“Not this year,” Mr. Wang replied as he walked toward the auditorium without breaking stride.

“Have you submitted proposals in the past?”

“Yes, last year.”

“What was it about?”

“People’s livelihood.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

‘There’s someone waiting for me there. Sorry,” Mr. Wang said. And with that he disappeared.

Siyi Zhao contributed research from Seoul.