You have the whole weekend to work this one out.

Xi Jinping needs the people to allow him to rule. If he gets too authoritarian? They will turn. And if conflict raises its ugly head?

Won't fight as volunteers do! Won't work any more than they're forced to by a tyrant! It may take some time for some to understand the populace to realise, they are slaves in a slave state and the freedom they believe they have is illusionary.

Moreover, A big China needs the world and unfettered global trade to stay solvent! And it needs to stay solvent to keep its own people in line and obedient to their regal master!

A wise Leader will understand, that one catches more flies with a teaspoon of honey than a whole jar of vinegar! And it costs less to buy power and influence than go to war to get it!

Besides, the only war worth waging, is the war on poverty!
Alan B.

What a beautiful little essay. An absolute joy to read.
More like that please.

I'm not going to even try to reply in kind. The poetry of Ms Marshall's style is above my pay-grade.

So just a commentary on the points she raises.

Xi is an emperor because the Chinese want/need a leader. I've written before about those nations who have such along history of one-man rule that it is part of their DNA. It comes to the population with their mother's milk.

Centuries, millennia of central rule inculcates the population with the need to be ruled by a strongman. It destroys the urge to liberty or more precisely never lets it flower.

China, Russia, most of the MENA states. Its been with them for so long that liberty isn't really a possibility.

Democracy can't grow or flourish in these places. Even when it briefly happens, the nation looks for a strongman at the slightest hurdle.

Its why the Heroes of Marathon are so important in the unique culture that is western individualism and liberty.

The instinctive urge to the comfort of centralised rule can be changed. Six generations of being exposed to western liberty in Hong Kong has created a people that baulk at central control. Let's hope they survive.

Trump has exposed China as a paper tiger. It seems clear that China's apparent advancements are fragile and, as Steyn said long ago, China will become old before it becomes rich.

A paper tiger it might be but Xi has the tiger by the tail. He needs the economy to continuously boom or his rule is threatened. Many an emperor was removed when the masses determined that the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn. But when an emperor is removed, he is always replaced by an emperor. The people can't conceive of anything different.

Its such a shame that this gorgeous piece of writing is ignored by the group. That says all we need to know about said group.

Not so long ago ABC reported on the findings of, how shall I say, not insignificant british judicial authorities.

What they found was that members of Falun Gong and other healthy prisoners of conscience, were being murdered by the so-called communist authorities by way of removing their organs for the benefit of others and leaving them to die.

Many appropriate comparisons were made with the Nazis.

(and anyone who states that such comparisons should never be made is either a fool, nefarious or both in my opinion)

But as usual, surprise, surprise, this story of utmost significance did not remain on the airwaves for long.

In the aftermath of WWII there are those who have taken oath to stamp out all forms of genocide and the vile scum of the chinese communist party are indeed "genocidal vermin."

The best thing would be to terminate the chinese communist party and impose regime change. In so doing, it would be good to additionally inflict mass structural damage such that australia will have another resources boom to assist the new regime in rebuilding, and a correction to the world financial order by smoking up the buildings chock full of u.s. and other guvment bonds.

From one point of view Mao and his supporters rose up to terminate a tyrannical regime that caused untold suffering. But human nature being what it is, it now seems that it has been a case of just replacing one form of tyranny with another.

I am left wondering if that leaves more than a few of them rolling in their graves.