Then Covid threw a spanner in the works. Channelling the Great Helmsman “In 2022, Saudi officials were anxious to keep the price of oil steady at about $100 per barrel – essentially to finance a variety of development investments at home – that could only be achieved through unified OPEC+ agreements, but also to keep communication channels open to discuss various issues.”
irannews.ru "Once the firing starts it's three deep breaths, a couple of swear words
and you move on." In 1989 - as the Soviet
Union was breaking up - China's hopes for change were crushed by tanks
and automatic gunfire. By 1989, that included General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, a reformist. "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." "He believes that in the world of hyper-competitive capitalism
and a hyper-competitive arms race
with the
United
States, the only plausible way that China can remain competitive is to remain under one party that happens to be called the Communist Party." The country was still recovering in that decade or so following Mao's death. Tens of millions had died on his watch - first from hunger because of his devastating mission to industrialise China overnight;
and then in the violent, paranoid purges of rivals, dissidents, intellectuals
and "class enemies". "The problem is that the villages are razed. There's no place to hide. If we don't have the air superiority, it's going to be difficult. We're running out of planes, three or four were shot down last week.
