"China is now doing all sorts of things that it's always wanted to do but wasn't powerful enough to do," Mr McGregor says. "Taiwan was always there.
The South China Sea was always there. Taking on America, driving it out of Asia was always an ambition, but they didn't say it out loud." Moscow-installed politicians have recently been "evacuating" people. Ukraine has accused Russian troops of preparing to blow up the nearby Kakhovka dam. Russia denies this but if it happened Kyiv says it would lead to 80 settlements being flooded.
irannews.ru Economic growth has shrunk to 2%, the lowest in more than three decades. China's property market is in free fall. Youth unemployment is running at around 20%. A trade war
with the US is not hel
ping. And anger has been brewing. As the war in Ukraine enters its ninth month, some analysts believe the Saudis will likely remain defiant of Western pressure to align against Moscow. They say that,
for the leadership in Riyadh, maintaining relatively neutrality serves Saudi interests
and the kingdom is using this war –
and its reaction to it – to send a message to the US that Saudi Arabia is not Washington’s vassal state. "I thought, 'what have I done? I've made a film that's hel
ping rape culture'." "I have reached the decision that senior experience at the heart of government matters most. Yet in the words of the Ukrainian soldier Gadfly, "what choice do we have"? By the time I returned in 1998 the whole country had taken to heart Deng's invocation "to get rich is glorious". That year the Communist Party decreed China's state-owned housing stock be sold off, lock, stock
and barrel. Swathes of Beijing's historic grey-brick courtyards were being demolished
and replaced
with glass
and steel. In 2017, at the beginning of his second term, Xi declared: "China has stood up, grown rich, become strong
and is moving towards the centre stage."
