There is an old Soviet tale about Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At lunchtime, he would retreat into his office and stare at the map of the world. The map was centered on the Soviet Union. The old Bolshevik would just glare at it as if it were a giant chessboard awaiting Moscow’s next move.
While the US has its problems, future global Chinese supremacy won’t be one. Far from being in a position of overwhelming strength, China and its Communist leadership face imminent multifront domestic crises that will threaten the existence not only of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but the existence of the Chinese state as a unified whole.
Thursday marked the 151st birthday of the most successful revolutionary of all time, Vladimir Lenin. With only a tiny cabal of diehard followers, Lenin seized control of the world’s largest country and inaugurated a reign of darkness and terror that lasted seventy years.
