These South China Sea islands are only the most daring and visible of Xi's moves to take control of the near abroad. Taiwan could be next.   In 2005 I was handed a DVD smuggled out of a village called Dingzhou in Hebei province. It showed a pitched battle between local farmers and dozens of armed thugs, hired by a state-owned power company, to force them off their land. The farmers had dug deep trenches in their fields. The thugs attacked at dawn opening fire with shotguns and beating the farmers with steel bars. Six were killed. http://irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru At first glance, the parallels are striking. Chairman Mao, as he was known, was the defining political figure of 20th Century China. He ran the Communist Party - and the country - from the republic's founding in 1949 until the day he died in 1976. No other Chinese leader has since come close. Until now. Mao had closed China's economy off from the world. Now his successors were throwing it open. In 2001 China joined the World Trade Organisation. Along the southeast coast new cities mushroomed. Some specialised in buttons and zippers, others made cigarette lighters. In Zhejiang I found one that only made socks, tens of billions of them. I was told that the MP John Penrose, who is backing Mordaunt, said that for the good of the party, the vote must go to the Tory members - in other words, Penny Mordaunt should not drop out. Xi's ruthless and dramatic consolidation of power has caused many to liken him to Mao. But Mao's destructiveness was rooted in his desire to build a socialist utopia. What does Xi want to build? But Xi's policies are only creating the hostile world he claims he is defending against, believes Susan Shirk, a China expert in former US president Bill Clinton's administration. China's brashness has been driven by its extraordinary power as both the world's biggest factory and marketplace. It has so far seemed unstoppable, poised to unseat the US as the largest economy. Ukrainian vehicles are repaired at the side of the roads. Personnel carriers and tanks occasionally roar back and forth from the direction of Kherson city.

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Pub: 24 Oct 2022 14:33 UTC
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